Rio Grande Gorge Bridge

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.

From the record

“The Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, locally known as the "Gorge Bridge" or the "Taos High Bridge", is a steel deck arch bridge across the Rio Grande Gorge 10 miles (16 km) northwest of Taos, New Mexico, United States. Roughly 600 feet (180 m) above the Rio Grande, it is the seventh highest bridge in the United States.”
Wikipedia article Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 40 National Register listings published here for Taos County · listed in 1997 · category: Structure.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 structure as contributing to the listing.
Address. NM 111 over Rio Grande Gorge, Taos, 87529
When was it listed? July 1997
Category. structure
Also known as. Historic Highway Bridges of New Mexico MPS
Census division. Taos
National Register reference number. 97000733 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Fires near this property

18 since 1994

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 18 fires within 5 miles of Rio Grande Gorge Bridge between 1994 and 2020, burning about 24 acres in total. 9 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
Natural	9
Debris and open burning	4
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	2
Fireworks	1
Equipment and vehicle use	1
Smoking	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
12 August 2010	Natural	under an acre	Taos Field Office	LLAMA
8 July 1994	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.2 acres	New Mexico State Forestry Division	KIRBY
3 July 2003	Natural	under an acre	Taos Field Office	GORGE
2 July 2004	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Taos Field Office	TRESOREJAS
18 July 2018	Natural	under an acre	Carson National Forest	CERRO
15 July 2003	Natural	under an acre	Taos Field Office	PLUMTREE
8 June 2013	Natural	under an acre	Carson National Forest	TEXAS
27 June 2010	Natural	10 acres	Carson National Forest	3 PEAKS

Every fire recorded in Taos County

Mines and quarries near this property

4 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 4 workings within 5 miles of Rio Grande Gorge Bridge: 4 past producers. 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.

Site	Commodity	Status
Materials Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Materials Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Materials Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Materials Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer

Every working recorded in Taos County

Storms near this property

8 since 1997

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Taos, the town this property stands in, in 8 storm reports between 1997 and 2021: 4 hail, 3 thunderstorm wind, 1 cold/wind chill. The reports record 1 death. 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
December 1997	Cold/Wind Chill	Taos	1 killed	A 62 year old Taos woman was found dead in the side yard of her home. The death appeared to be an accidental fall and exposure to subzero temperatures.
December 2021	Thunderstorm Wind	Taos	$5,000,000	Snow squall. An intense line of thunderstorms with rain and snow moved quickly through Taos County early in the morning. An AWOS station in Taos measured a peak wind gust of 62 mph, but damage estimates within the city and surrounding areas indicate wind speeds of 80 to 100 mph as these high winds caused extensive damage. These thunderstorms produced a 2.9 mile long swath of damage from Blueberry Hill Road to El Prado oriented in an east-northeast direction. Six to seven homes sustained roof damage while one single wide mobile home was moved off its foundation. Numerous trees were snapped at the base with other large limbs downed, and at least two power poles were snapped at their bases. Two homes sustained significant roof damage with the aluminum roofing peeled completely off the homes. On a two story home, three-quarters of its roof was missing with part of its second story destroyed. At another home, a trampoline was found fifty feet in the air stuck in a tree. A radio tower was also downed which resulted in a power outage to the northern half of the city. Several schools in the area cancelled classes for the day while government offices were also closed. Taos County declared a State of Emergency, and COVID-19 vaccination sites were temporarily transformed into shelters for displaced people. Damages are a rough estimate.
July 1997	Thunderstorm Wind	Taos	$30,000	High winds ripped away a portion of the roof from the Hacienda Inn. No injuries were reported. The area of the hotel damaged had been closed for months.
June 2015	Hail	Taos	-	Trained spotter reported penny size hail.
June 2008	Hail	Taos	-	no account filed
May 2006	Hail	Taos	-	no account filed
May 2006	Thunderstorm Wind	Taos	-	no account filed
May 2006	Hail	Taos	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Taos County

Newspapers printed here

3,655 digitised pages

3 papers published in this town, digitised by the Library of Congress and free to read: 638 issues, 3,655 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
La Revista De Taos and the Taos Valley News	190? to 1905
La Revista De Taos	1905 to 1922
La Revista De Taos and the Taos Cresset	1905

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

2 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Photograph	Property	Distance	Listed
	Turley Mill and Distillery Site	7.5 miles	1978
	Carson School	7.9 miles	1986

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 97000733 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Taos County	All 40 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
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.