Sandia means "watermelon" in the local Indian language, because from afar the mountain resembles a watermelon. Supposedly the Sandia Tramway is the world's longest, and it was first designed in 1939 by an engineering company from Switzerland, presumably with experience constructing similar tramways to the tops of Alpine ski slopes. A few decades later, the older Sandia Tramway was replaced by more modern equipment. The tramway operator said that in the entire history of the tramway, there has never been an accident. "It is safer to ride the tram than to ride your horse," the operator said.

The boarding station, shown above, is at an elevation of about 6,300 feet; and the tramway goes up to the peak at 10,378 feet. The trip takes about 15 minutes. There are two towers along the route, towers which shift the tram from one direction to another. During my trip to the peak, a maintenance man was standing on top of the tram. He jumped off at one of these stations, to oil the system, then caught a ride to the higher station to oil that one, and then hitched a ride back down to the bottom on the tram that I rode back down. Very interesting, and it is a job that I personally would never do. "Well, a job is a job," said the blasé tram operator. "He does it everyday." If you look at the top middle of the second photo, you can see where the tramway docks at the Sandia peak.

In the third photo, I have smudged out in gray a bright camera flash reflection on the glass of the display case, over the photograph of the seafloor. If Sandia Mountain used to be under the sea, then cataclysmic geological changes must have occurred to cause that. Of course, some of us are well aware of the reason for this. By now, it almost verges on boredom. We are playing an impatient waiting game right now. Crossover is coming. Where will you be?

This is a shot of the Sandia Mountain side as we rode up in the tram. The views from the tram were spectacular.

Approaching the top of Sandia Mountain peak, the red structures are the "fence" boundaries of the upper tramway station.