Product Description

It’s been over a decade since the release of this, Benchmark's first atlas. For the 10th Anniversary Edition, Benchmark has drafted completely new Landscape Maps™ and Public Lands maps, both at larger scales, with far more field-checked information than before. A complete Recreation Guide has been added, covering important outdoor recreation categories and interests, and new enlargements of Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Taos are now included.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #38641 in Books
• Brand: Benchmark Maps
• Published on: 2006-03-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 95 pages

Customer Reviews

New and Improved...notably improved...well worth buying
My copy of the fourth edition of this map is worn out from use. Many of its pages have been torn out for backpacking or hitchhiking trips and then taped back in, many of my favorite roads have been highlighted and annotated, and its corners are all bent and scuffed from the map being stuffed beneath car seats and thrown into tents. I like that edition a lot, but I've always had complaints about it: its contents were detailed and accurate, but hard to access...it had maps of both public and private and urban areas, but were hard to correlate with one another. And there were certain areas that weren't noted, and that should have been.
However, with the latest addition of Benchmark's "New Mexico Road and Recreation and Atlas," almost all of my complaints have faded away, and my opinion of this map and this company have risen considerably.
Where before the information was hard to access, now the back of the mapbook has the entire state divided into a simple numbered grid, and every number over every area corresponds to a page on the map.
For instance, say I want to see a map of the Bootheel area. On the back it's labeled 48. I turn to page 48, and there it is, in full detail.
Then, if I'd like to see a map of that same area, but with the public lands featured more prominently, I just look on the top of the page I was on, page 48, and it tells me clearly, and with a diagram, to turn to page 80. and on page 80, there's exactly what I needed. Hooray!
It's great. If I had any complaints about it, it's that La Madera Road, my favorite dirt road of all time--between San Antonito and Madrid--could have a little more detail, and a few more of that area's ghost towns and historic features could have been noted. Overall however, I would recommend this map to anyone, as one of the very best I've seen of the state. (Now I want to buy their maps for the other Four Corners states as well.) I'm sure in a few years my new copy will look even more beat up than my last copy--and I can't wait to start to make it look that way.

Not my favorite
I prefer the New Mexico Atlas and Gazetteer over the Benchmark New Mexico Road & Recreation Atlas. The reason is that the gazetteer shows state and federal lands - places where I'm not tresspassing. That's important to me. I carry them both, but the gazetteer gets used much more.

Absolutely the best maps out there.
Go out and get these maps. If you enjoy route planning and adventure traveling you will love these maps. I have them all. If you are route planning with Garmin software you WILL NEED these maps for the perspective and valuable information.