Borrego Pass, NM

Borrego Pass is an unincorporated community and census-designated place consisting of two Navajo communities and a trading post in the Navajo lands of McKinley County, in northwestern New Mexico, United States. The 2020 census counted 117 residents. The community formed around the Borrego Pass Trading Post which was opened in 1927 and was first operated by Ben and Anna Harvey, and then starting in 1935 by Bill and Jean Cousins. Borrego Pass was sold in 1939 to Don and Fern Smouse who operated it for over forty years. There is a Navajo school at Borrego Pass, the Borrego Pass School which was established in the early 1950s.

Borrego Pass is now affiliated with the Bureau of Indian Education. A newcomer can read Borrego Pass through the overlap of its older landmarks, surrounding geography, and current places. For a newcomer, Borrego Pass comes into focus through those concrete links among its past, landscape, and current routines. Borrego Pass is located in east-central McKinley County on Navajo Route 48, 15 miles by road southeast of Crownpoint and 16 miles north of Prewitt. The town center, including Borrego Pass School, sits at an elevation of 7,369 feet less than a mile southwest of the pass proper.