Mountainair, New Mexico
10 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1917 and the latest in 1986. It stands in the Mountainair-Encino census division. It lies in ZIP code area 87036. The Survey maps it on the Mountainair quadrangle. 884 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 6,519 feet above sea level.
On record in Mountainair
Buildings and businesses the archive holds for this place. Each opens its own page, with the source record it came from.
On the National Register 4 records
Mountainair Municipal Auditoriumlisted 1987
Rancho Bonitolisted 1978
Shaffer Hotellisted 1978
Willard Mercantile Companylisted 2018
Population over time
3 figuresMountainair fell from 1,116 to 884 between 2000 and 2020. These are the recorded population figures Wikidata holds for this place, reached through the Geographic Names Information System number this page is keyed on rather than by name, so they belong to this place and not to another of the same name. Most are census counts, but not all are: an early figure may be a founding or settlement estimate, and an estimate published within five years of a census is left out. The change column is computed, and is left blank where more than 20 years separate a figure from the one before it, because a gap that long is not a change between two counts.
| Year | People | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 2000 | 1,116 | |
| 2010 | 928 | -188 (-17%) |
| 2020 | 884 | -44 (-5%) |
Topographic sheets covering this place
7 surveys from 10 printed sheetsMatched by testing this settlement's coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical collection. Each opens the scanned sheet at the Survey.
- 1917 USGS Estancia quadrangle1:125000
- 1954 USGS Socorro quadrangle1:250000, 2 printings
- 1956 USGS Mountainair quadrangle1:62500, 2 printings
- 1958 USGS Socorro quadrangle1:250000
- 1962 USGS Socorro quadrangle1:250000
- 1979 USGS Belen quadrangle1:100000, 2 printings
- 1986 USGS Mountainair quadrangle1:24000
Photographs
8 of 9 photographs shown, 1943Taken for the Office of War Information and the Farm Security Administration, who photographed the country between 1935 and 1944. Works of United States government photographers, with no known restriction on use. Each opens its catalogue record.
Delano, Jack, 1943. Library of Congress
Delano, Jack, 1943. Library of Congress
Delano, Jack, 1943. Library of Congress
Delano, Jack, 1943. Library of Congress
Delano, Jack, 1943. Library of Congress
Photographer not recorded. Library of Congress
Photographer not recorded. Library of Congress
Delano, Jack, 1943. Library of Congress
Every photograph of Torrance County
Fires near this place
21 since 1993Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 21 fires within 5 miles of Mountainair between 1993 and 2014, burning about 200 acres in total. 7 started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
| Reported cause | Fires |
|---|---|
| Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 10 |
| Natural | 7 |
| Debris and open burning | 3 |
| Equipment and vehicle use | 1 |
The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.
| Date | Cause | Size | Reported by | Name on the report |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 September 1994 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 1.0 acres | New Mexico State Forestry Division | SISNEROS |
| 10 September 2007 | Natural | under an acre | New Mexico State Forestry Division | not named |
| 5 August 2003 | Debris and open burning | under an acre | Cibola National Forest | ROOSEVELT 404 |
| 24 August 1999 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | under an acre | New Mexico State Forestry Division | PARDA |
| 6 July 1993 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 5.0 acres | New Mexico State Forestry Division | ROMERO |
| 28 July 1993 | Natural | under an acre | Cibola National Forest | not named |
| 18 July 1996 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | under an acre | New Mexico State Forestry Division | LUCY |
| 17 July 2005 | Natural | 1.0 acres | New Mexico State Forestry Division | not named |
Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:
Mines and quarries near this place
4 within 5 milesRegional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 4 workings within 5 miles of Mountainair: 4 unknowns. None of them still produces. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
| Where | Site | Commodity | Status | Recorded |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Materials Pit | Sand and Gravel, Construction | Unknown | ||
| Materials Pit | Sand and Gravel, Construction | Unknown | ||
| Materials Pit | Sand and Gravel, Construction | Unknown | ||
| Mountainair Pit | Sand and Gravel, Construction | Unknown |
Storms near this place
5 since 1999Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Mountainair in 5 storm reports between 1999 and 2021: 3 hail, 1 funnel cloud, 1 thunderstorm wind. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.
| When | Event | Place named | Harm | What the report says |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 2021 | Thunderstorm Wind | Mountainair | - | A RAWS station near Mountainair measured a 61 mph wind gust associated with a decaying shower. |
| August 1999 | Funnel Cloud | Mountainair | - | Brief, small funnel clouds reported through emergency coordinator. |
| July 2005 | Hail | Mountainair | - | no account filed |
| June 2004 | Hail | Mountainair | - | no account filed |
| August 2004 | Hail | Mountainair | - | no account filed |
Newspapers printed here
1,050 digitised pages1 paper published in this town, digitised by the Library of Congress and free to read: 217 issues, 1,050 pages. Every page is searchable, so a name or a street can be looked for directly in what the town printed about itself at the time.
| Newspaper | Published |
|---|---|
| The Mountainair Independent | 1916 to 1941 |
What the paper printed
11,618 wordsFront pages of the local paper, read from the Library of Congress scans: 4 issues all from 1916, 11,618 words in total. Each is reproduced on its own page, exactly as the recogniser returned it.
These pages read less well than anything else here, and the number is worth stating: about three words in four come through cleanly, against nine in ten for the building records. An 1896 broadsheet sets eight-point type in seven columns on microfilm, which is the hardest thing in this archive to read by machine. We tested our own recognisers against the Library's and they were not better, so the Library's text is what appears, with the wholly unreadable columns removed. Read it as a guide to what the paper covered, and follow the link to the scan before quoting anything.
| Issue | Paper | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1916-10-05 | The Mountainair Independent | 3,128 words |
| 1916-10-26 | The Mountainair Independent | 3,122 words |
| 1916-11-23 | The Mountainair Independent | 2,418 words |
| 1916-12-14 | The Mountainair Independent | 2,950 words |
Nearest settlements
The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.
| Map | Place | Distance | Sheets |
|---|---|---|---|
| Punta de Agua | 5.9 miles | 11 | |
| Broncho | 6.2 miles | 10 | |
| Deer Canyon | 6.2 miles | 8 | |
| La Cienega | 6.4 miles | 11 | |
| Abo | 6.6 miles | 8 | |
| Roundtop (historical) | 7.4 miles | 7 | |
| El Gato | 7.7 miles | 11 | |
| Los Chavez | 8.2 miles | 11 |
Elsewhere
Matched on this settlement's Geographic Names Information System number rather than its name, so it cannot be a different place of the same name in another state.
| Wikipedia article on Mountainair | An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied. |
| Wikidata item Q1950884 | The structured record the population and elevation above come from. Public domain (CC0). |
Provenance
This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 892293. The sheet list is computed by point-in-boundary test against the United States Geological Survey's historical topographic inventory. Both are works of the United States government and carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.






