Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Magdalena, NM

Magdalena is an incorporated village in Socorro County in west-central New Mexico, on U.S. Route 60 about 26 miles west of the city of Socorro.

Spanish soldiers traveling below Magdalena Peak saw the profile of a woman on its west face, remembered as the Lady on the Mountain, and a priest with them, reminded of a Spanish peak called La Sierra de Maria Magdalena, gave this peak the name La Sierra de Magdalena; the pass below became Magdalena Gap and the town took the same name.

The village took its name when its post office opened in 1884, and it was incorporated in 1913 during a mining boom.

Magdalena was known as the Trails End: a railroad spur built from Socorro in 1884 carried out cattle, sheep wool, timber, and ore from the surrounding country.

The Magdalena Livestock Driveway, running about 125 miles west from the village, was the last regularly used cattle trail in the United States; drives ran annually from 1885 to 1916, the trail remained in continual use through 1971, and the original stockyards are still intact.

The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway closed the Magdalena branch on November 20, 1970, and the tracks were removed soon afterward.

The Kelly Mine, about two and a half miles south of Magdalena, opened in 1883 and produced lead, silver, zinc, and smithsonite; the mining town of Kelly grew to nearly 3,000 people before its last residents left in 1947, and its church and the mine headframe still stand in the ghost town.

The 2020 census counted 806 residents in Magdalena, down from a mining-era peak of 1,867 in the 1920 census.

In the 2000 census, Magdalena had 913 residents living in 372 households.

The Magdalena Public Library and the Boxcar Museum share the village's old railroad depot, and the Bank of Magdalena Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.