Customer Reviews

Benchmark New Mexico Road & Recreation Atlas

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have seen other New Mexico atlases, and I feel that this one is the best. While the scale is larger than some of the others, this is appropriate because the others show too many roads. Many times, the other atlases show roads that do not seem to exist or show the incorrect numbers. New Mexico Road and Recreation Atlas is very accurate as far as I can tell. I highly recommend it.

Many roads are completely missing in this ill-conceived New Mexico Atlas. I'm afraid that the idea of having two different map styles for each area reduced the level of detail so much.

I like this map, but it could be much easier to use. It doesn't have any sort of easy-to-use system, aside from a basic index, and so any goodness it contains often goes wasted.
It does have a lot of features of southern New Mexico that other maps don't, and a lot of dirt roads that others don't, but it's not necessarily complete.
I'd recommend the New Mexico DeLorme map over this one, but used together the two can be very helpful. (Unless you're lost in the maze of cattle roads off of County Highway 52A, off of North 14 between Madrid and Golden. In that case, both maps will fail you, you will make the mistake of using a windmill for a landmark--there are dozens--and you will drive around until you run out of gas. You'll have fun though.)

I used this map for a weeklong trip around north-central New Mexico, and it was very useful. The layout of the maps is different than any atlas I've used - big improvement there. My main criticism is that, as a "recreation atlas," it should show you more detail around key recreation areas (e.g., Pecos Wilderness). I thought it would be more similar to a Delorme atlas with detailed hiking landmarks (water towers, powerlines, etc.). It'll get you to the entrance and give you some main forest roads, but I would've prefered some more details and close-up relief maps.

Overall, it was a good atlas for highway and biway driving, but not the outdoors guide I was looking for.

It started for me with the purchase of Benchmark's Washington State road & recreation atlas at Costco. Now I'm the owner of New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, Idaho, Oregon, and California, which I bought from Amazon at approximately the same price offered by Costco, but Costco outlets only offer the state they're in or immediately surrounding. Lets face it, I'm a map junkie, a roadtrip-a-holic who is always on the lookout for the back road to anywhere. That being said, I try to stay on pavement, at least 98% of the time and am a little color (ok, a lot) blind so most maps with the color coded roads don't help much. The Benchmark maps use dashes and superior detail to make road conditions and names obvious - even for me. If you like to keep to the interstate, you have no need for these, but if you're like me and anxious to explore the outback, buy Benchmark maps.

Great contour atlas, easy to find objects of interest. The maps are too redundant and the scale is disappointing (I expected at least twice better).

I bought this Benchmark atlas and the DeLorme New Mexico atlas both back in 2004. So I do not know the current editions of either book, but can say that of the 2004 versions of these, the DeLorme is greatly superior. It simply shows far more information on the maps. The split design of this atlas also baffles me; I find myself only using the "public lands" section and totally ignoring the "landscape" section. The latter does give a better at-a-glance impression of elevations, but I really need to know where the public lands are and otherwise information is duplicated between the two. I'd much rather have more detail in a single map than two coarser-scaled, mostly redundant maps. Nonetheless, for what it does show I cannot fault this map. I just wish it showed more.

If the DeLorme atlas weren't around this would be a must-have; but I have the DeLorme atlas and so this mostly gathers dust.

Beautiful, detailed, and loaded with information