Luciano Mesa is a large mesa extending over many miles in southern Quay County and in neighboring Curry and De Baca Counties. It is visible from Interstate-40 west of Tucumcari, and the highpoint itself is only about 10 air miles south of the interstate. However, access from the interstate is likely to be difficult, with a rough private road and some locked gates. Instead, the highpoint area can best be accessed via a long, lonely highway from the south.

I came to this area after having visited the easy Curry County highpoint. Although the eastern bits of New Mexico are plane flat, the fact is that much of this part of the state lies atop a series of large mesas. The traditional name for this region is the Llano Estacado, or "staked planes". In other words, the flatness on top is surrounded by a series of cliffs that encircle it (some areas have genuine cliffs, others have softly rolling hills). For some light reading, try this USGS site.

When on top of the Llano Estacado, the flatness is mind numbing. However, if coming up from Interstate-40, the access highways snake up the northern flanks of the Llano, and you get a better idea of the topography of this part of the country. After coming in from the Curry highpoint, I took a series of highways to NM-156, a lonely state highway that passes through no towns of any size and through endless grassy rangeland. Thirty miles later along NM-156, at which the highway goes west to north, I came upon the Ima townsite, at which nothing but minor ruins sit today. A little bit north of here the pavement ends and the continuation of NM-156 bends west again, parallelling a long fence.

Here, the road is called Quay County Road BK. Soon, a road marker pointed Road BK as heading north through a gate. For reference, this road is about a mile east of the Quay-Guadalupe county line. No signs mark it as such, but the road will then make a quick dogleg left and start down the mesa side. I know this because I drove past the turnoff I wanted and went down this road a little bit. At least I now knew where I was. Backtracking, I went back to where BK goes north through a gate. No signs at the gate prohibit trespassing, although the presence of the gate might fool some people. The county road sign is pretty clear here so I am certain the public has a right-of-way through here.

I passed through said gate and immediately spied a pair of ruts heading off at 45 degrees to the northwest. I followed the ruts for about a mile, passed a fence line, parked and got out and started walking. A semi-large area of about 100 acres is enclosed within the 5,560-foot contour; a 5,561-foot spot elevation is located at a spot on its northern edge near the mesa rim. I spent about 20 minutes walking here and there, to and fro, amid the juniper and grasses. I hoped to find a little mound or rock or berm or something, but the land is truly flat: no such natural bump exists anywhere. I walked to some areas that looked high (maybe a trick on the eye) then looked for other areas that looked as high or higher. All this was essentially moot, though, and I ended up following a Brownian Curve hike at best. I had to invoke my "Rule of the Shin" here, which says that I probably (95% confidence) stood within a shin's height of the true highpoint, at some unknown time and/or place. A somewhat Heisenbergian highpoint for you nerdy types.

A GPS might be useful here although the roads on the map match reality pretty well. I did find something interesting on the seldom-traveled rutted road I was on: a metal something-or-other was embedded in the road, shaved off about 2 inches above ground level. It seemed to be where the county line would be, and maybe was set there for that purpose, or just to mark one section from another. Who knows. It may have been a sign at one time, sheared off by an overzealous driver. This was the the third of five highpoints done this day: I was feeling pretty energetic still, Roosevelt County was next up.