Glorieta, NM

Glorieta is a Santa Fe County census-designated place on the east side of Glorieta Pass in the southern Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The pass is the direct mountain route between the upper Pecos Valley and the Rio Grande, which has made this a transportation corridor for centuries. The Santa Fe Trail used the pass in the nineteenth century, and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway reached it in 1879. Interstate 25 now follows the same general crossing, with mountain homes and small roads branching off the highway.

Glorieta’s name is permanently tied to the Battle of Glorieta Pass, fought March 26–28, 1862, during the Civil War campaign in New Mexico. The National Park Service’s Glorieta Unit of Pecos National Historical Park preserves part of that battlefield and its surrounding landscape. The pass also remains a practical route to Santa Fe west of the mountains and Pecos communities to the east. Glorieta is a small high-country settlement whose daily map is made from I-25, old trail lines, railroad history, and the mountain pass that brought all of them together.