Urraca Mesa

Urraca Mesa reaches an elevation of 8,594 feet, rising just under 800 feet from the Las Vegas Plateau in northeastern New Mexico. The mesa contains so much iron and magnetite that lightning strikes are more common than anywhere else in the entire state. Those strikes have created such a large quantity of magnetic lodestone that when hiking the mesa compasses become disoriented, photographs often turn out distorted and unusual and a strange blue glow is seen along the mesa’s rim on some nights. But most peculiar is the natural terrain on the surface of the mesa that looks like a human skull on topographical maps, and if you believe the folklore, the left eye may be a door to the Underworld.

At one time, the area was home to a thriving community of Anasazi, but around 1500 BC they mysteriously vanished. The stories claim there was a great battle between evil and good. That the Anasazi entered the gate to the underworld to push back a great horde of demons. One stayed behind, a shaman, who locked the door behind his people’s surge. Those who have seen him say he is engulfed in a great blue flame, and wards off those who attempt to visit Urraca. It’s also said he still guards the gate, keeping a watchful eye and ensuring evil remains on the otherside.

Urraca is the Spanish name for the magpie, intelligent birds, kin to crows and ravens and a member of the Corvidae family. Traditionally these birds are associated with deception and in some cultures as messengers of Death. After the Anasazi Shaman locked the gate, he stationed 8 puma totems around the mesa. These were placed to scare away the Urraca who want to reopen the gate, and it’s said if all these totems fall that’s just what those crafty birds will do, unleashing an unknown evil into this world. At last count, only 2 were still standing.