3:10 to Yuma|Diablo Canyon — Basalt Walls on the Road to Contention

Sixteen miles from the Santa Fe plaza the dirt of Old Buckman Road drops into a slot where basalt walls rise a few hundred feet on either side and the sky narrows to a strip. The Bureau of Land Management, which manages the eastern cliffs, names 3:10 to Yuma among the films shot here, along with The Missing and Cowboys & Aliens. Stand in the wash and the reason is obvious. No fence, no pole, no road cut. Nothing in the frame belongs to the last hundred years.

The canyon is free and open year round, first come first served, with a fourteen-day camping limit. Getting there means Veterans Memorial Highway to Camino La Tierra, then about seven and a half miles of washboard on Old Buckman Road, which turns to grease after rain and will strand a low car. Climbers come for more than a hundred routes on the cracked columns, graded from 5.8 to 5.13, on formations with names like Winter Wall and Solar Cave. The walk-through is a dry riverbed that runs roughly seven and a half miles out to the Rio Grande.

Morning is the hour to be here. The east wall catches first light while the canyon floor stays cold, and that difference pushes a steady draft down the wash. Ravens work the updraft between the walls, and their calls come back off the rock a half second late.

Photo: Bureau of Land Management, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).