[3][4] Socorro was originally the name given to a Native American village (see: Puebloan peoples) by Don Juan de Oñate in 1598.

Having received vitally needed food and assistance from the native population, Oñate named the pueblo Socorro ("succor" in English).

Socorro County is home to multiple scientific research institutions including New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and its associated Very Large Array, the Magdalena Ridge Observatory, and the Langmuir Laboratory for Atmospheric Research.

Basham noted in his report documenting the archeological history of the Cibola National Forest's Magdalena Ranger District, which is almost entirely within Socorro County, that “[t]he heritage resources on the district are diverse and representative of nearly every prominent human evolutionary event known to anthropology.

[5] Outlaw renegades Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch and notorious Apaches like Cochise and Geronimo have ties to Socorro County's San Mateo Mountains.

Vicks Peak was named after Victorio, “a Mimbreño Apache leader whose territory included much of the south and southwest New Mexico.”[6] Famous for defying relocation orders in 1879 and leading his warriors “on a two-year reign of terror before he was killed,” Victorio is at least as highly regarded as Geronimo or Cochise among Apaches.

Stories of depredations by the Apache Kid, and of his demise, became so common and dramatic that in southwestern folklore they may be exceeded only by tales of lost Spanish gold.

We know this by an essay written by Aldo Leopold in 1919 where he documents stumbling upon the remains of a recently abandoned Indian hunting camp.

[8] While some mining activity, involving gold, silver, and copper, occurred in the southern part of the range near the end of the nineteenth century,[9] the prospecting/mining remnants are barely visible today due to collapse, topographic screening, and vegetation regrowth.

[6] In fact, the last regularly used cattle trail in the United States stretched 125 miles westward from Magdalena.

The route was formally known as the Magdalena Livestock Driveway, but more popularly known to cowboys and cattlemen as the Beefsteak Trail.

In 2024, Donald Trump carried the county with a narrow majority, the first time a Republican presidential candidate had done this since Bush in 1988.

[1] It was the only county in the state to flip Republican that year, even as Grisham handedly won re-election statewide.

With multiple mountain ranges, extents of grasslands and marshes providing a wide array of available habitats, Socorro County is home to an extensive variety of ecosystems and wildlife.

Socorro County contains 826 species of wildlife, including 14 amphibians, 60 reptiles, 336 birds, and 96 mammals.

[27] Wildlife in the County includes coyote, deer, elk, pronghorn antelope, bighorn sheep, Barbary sheep, black bear, mountain lion, wild turkey, various furbearers, Mexican spotted owl, and quail.

The Apache Kid and the Withington Wilderness Areas are both located in the San Mateo Mountains within the Cibola National Forest's Magdalena Ranger District.

The Bosque del Apache Wilderness comprises two separate sections, totaling 30,427 acres of the National Wildlife Refuge.