Courtesy a kottke.org link, I discovered this Air & Space article on the First Photo from Outer Space.
Turns out that shortly after WWII, scientists launched a V-2 missile into outer space from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The rocket had on board a 35mm motion picture camera, and it reached an altitude of 65 miles at its apex. The missile crashed to earth, and the camera broke (as you'd expect) but the film survived in its steel case.
Several of the film stills were stitched together to form a panorama that showed over a million square miles of the Southwestern United States. More specifically, of New Mexico, a state I grew up in.
And beyond the golly-gee-willikers nature of the shot, I'm amazed to see that the Jemez Mountains, the mountains I grew up at the foot of for ten years, are called out in the panorama as the "Valle Grande Mts."
Huh. I'd always known that the caldera that makes up the vast interior of the Jemez Mountains was the "Valle Grande" (and more specifically, "Baca Land" after the family that owned the vast expanse).
Granted, the photo was taken when the city of Los Alamos was freshly emerging from its secret-squirrel status as home of the Manhattan Project. But when did the name change? Or was the person in charge of labeling points of interest on the photo a little loosey-goosey with names?
Looking over at Wikipedia's entry on Jemez Mountains, I see that what I knew as "Valle Grande" is referred to by others as the "Valles Caldera." Wikipedia contribution, here I come!
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