From caves to crests, aliens to outlaws, galleries to galaxies, southern New Mexico shatters any stereotypes of being a flat, desolate desert.
Less than 50 miles from El Paso, the city of Las Cruces offers concerts, shopping, and museums, and nearby Mesilla and its historical plaza have art galleries, cafés, pecan-lined back roads, and the ghosts of Billy the Kid and other infamous and famous characters whose boots once tread here. Put yours on and explore this fascinating land.
Ruidoso is named for the sound of gurgling water from the Río Bonito and other mountain streams teeming with fish that flow through its forested mountains. In town, visitors explore shops and restaurants when they’re not skiing and snowboarding at 12,000-foot Ski Apache. It is America’s southern-most ski area that is an enterprise of the Mescalero Apache, who have called this area home for centuries. In the summer, hikers, mountain bikers, anglers, and nature lovers explore the surrounding Lincoln National Forest. At 6,900 feet above sea level, this area provides a cool retreat even in summer. Motorcyclists from across the nation convene here every September for the Golden Aspen Motorcycle Rally, the perfect time to begin looking for the changing fall colors.
Near Alamogordo, White Sands National Monument is a 275-square-mile sand box of stark-white gypsum dunes. All members of the family enjoy sliding down the dunes on sleds and even flattened cardboard boxes, and hikers enjoy the solitude and specialized life forms that have adapted to life in this area. Photographers revel amid the incredible image opportunities, and chances are you’ve already seen White Sands in any number of movies and commercials. Don’t miss the New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo, and learn about this area’s important historic and continuing contribution to space exploration. Although nearby, Cloudcroft seems a world away at 8,668 feet above sea level and surrounded by thick forest. This quaint town, formerly supported by logging, is now home to many artists and several nearby astronomical facilities attracted by the high altitude and clear skies, including the National Solar Observatory.
Carlsbad Caverns National Park is a great place to cool off during the summer, as the cave is always a constant 56 degrees. Descend more than a mile to explore caverns with names such as Hall of the White Giant filled with fantastic features of stalagmites, stalactites, cave pearls, and other wonders of millions of years of sulfuric acid erosion. For the even more adventurous, don a hard hat and follow rangers through “wild” caves, such as Spider Cave.
Scientists from around the globe use the Very Large Array Radio Telescope, 50 miles west of Socorro, to study distant galaxies and deep-space objects. Like White Sands, they make an incredible site seen in the movie Contact and many other productions.
If you’d like to have an out-of-this-world time in southern New Mexico, go to Roswell. All over the world the area is known for the Roswell Incident, when in 1947, the U.S. military allegedly recovered a crashed spaceship from another world here. The International UFO Museum describes this and other alleged UFO incidents in a professional manner, and even the streetlights in Roswell are shaped like alien heads. Make sure to also see the Roswell Museum and Art Center and the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art, showing that this attractive community is more than just little green men, (well, the museum says they were gray).
Southern New Mexico also contains the 3.3 million-acre Gila Wilderness, America’s largest and first wilderness area north of the charming and artsy Silver City. Nearby, the ruins of the Mogollon people’s 12th century cliff ruins at Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument speak to humans’ long association with the land here.
