Wheeler Peak (New Mexico)
Wheeler Peak is, at 13,167 feet (4,013 m), the highest peak in the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is located northeast of Taos in the northern part of the state, and just 2 miles southeast of the ski slopes of Taos Ski Valley. It lies in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the southernmost subrange of the Rocky Mountains.
Formerly named Taos Peak, after the nearby town of Taos, New Mexico, it was renamed Wheeler Peak in 1950. A plaque at the summit states that the mountain was:
Named in honor of Major George Montague Wheeler (1842–1905) who for ten years led a party of surveyors and naturalists collecting geologic, biologic, planimetric and topographic data in New Mexico and six other southwestern states.
Read more about Wheeler Peak (New Mexico): Nearby Peaks and Features, Climbing
Famous quotes containing the words wheeler and/or peak:
“There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a large and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.”
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919)
“In all things I would have the island of a man inviolate. Let us sit apart as the gods, talking from peak to peak all round Olympus. No degree of affection need invade this religion.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)