NM08 - Southern New Mexico — Take a Drive on the Wild Side

So you’ve seen every gallery in Santa Fe, done the annual Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, and hit too many of the Indian casinos? It might be time to head for the quieter but wilder southern half of New Mexico. I’m biased, having grown up in that part of the state, but a sea of glistening white sand, enormous underground caverns, and the largest wilderness area in the Southwest are only a few of the area’s attractions.

From Albuquerque, head southeast to the Pecos River Valley city of Roswell. If The X Files was your favorite television program, you’ll feel right at home at the International UFO Museum. It chronicles the famous 1947 Roswell incident, when a UFO allegedly crashed near the city, plus has exhibits on other UFO phenomena. If you arrive July 3-6 you can even attend the annual UFO Festival. Afterward, you can cool off with a swim at Bottomless Lakes State Park just east of the city. If the cool water isn’t enough, head west into the tall pines of the Sacramento Mountains. Sierra Blanca, the 12,000-foot peak that towers over Ruidoso, is high enough to have been carved by glaciers in the last ice age. The White Mountain Wilderness offers miles of trails along rushing trout streams to peaks and ridges with million-dollar views.

Ruidoso is the largest, busiest mountain town in the Sacramentos, with excellent skiing (yes, skiing) at Sierra Blanca and scores of small shops, galleries, and restaurants. Cloudcroft to the south also offers lush forest, along with a much quieter atmosphere. If you stay at the historical Lodge at Cloudcroft, you can do a round of golf at one of the world’s highest elevation golf courses (9,000 feet) and maybe even see the resident hotel ghost, Rebecca. The lodge was constructed soon after a logging railroad was built up into the mountains from the west in 1899.

From Cloudcroft, you can see a huge area of white covering the desert far below to the west. Drive down to it via U.S. 82, a dramatic descent of almost 5,000 feet from lush forest to the stark desert surrounding Alamogordo. Just past the city lies the largest field of gypsum dunes in the world at White Sands National Monument. Take your sunglasses; the 275 square miles of white dunes are blindingly bright at mid-day. Stay until sunset and watch the shadows grow, defining every ripple in the dunes.

From White Sands, head back up over the mountains to Carlsbad. The city has plentiful lodging and is the gateway to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Many different tours are possible. At a minimum, take the self-guided tour through the natural entrance to the enormous 8.2-acre Big Room with its 250-foot ceiling. The guided Kings Palace tour takes you through one of the most beautiful sections of the cavern. For a wilder experience, take the Slaughter Canyon Cave tour in the park’s back country. A strenuous one-mile hike brings you to the cave entrance where a flashlight becomes necessary. Unlighted dirt paths wind through massive chambers, past historical guano mining works, and beautiful limestone formations. The truly adventurous can take wild cave tours of Spider Cave or the Hall of the White Giant in Carlsbad Cavern. Using a helmet and headlamp, you’ll get to crawl through tight passages and shimmy through narrow slots to see places that few ever visit.

Las Cruces is a booming city in the Río Grande Valley with large-city services and is home to New Mexico State University. Check out the impressive Branigan Cultural Museum and Museum of Natural History. The craggy Organ Mountains just to the east attract hikers and rock climbers to their towering, soaring spires. The Dripping Springs Natural Area lies close by on the western slopes. Hiking trails, picnicking, and a visitor center there offer a good introduction to the mountains.

Follow in the footsteps of outlaw Billy the Kid in Old Mesilla, a picturesque town just west of Las Cruces. The charming plaza is surrounded by shops and galleries, the pastoral surrounding valley is famous for its pecan orchards. Stop by Stahman’s Pecans to sample some.

From Las Cruces, you can drive up I-25 to N.M. 26, which leads to Hatch and its world-famous chiles. Along the way you’ll see small farming towns, pecan orchards, and cultivated fields. Back on I-25, at Caballo Lake turn west onto N.M. 152 and begin the long climb into the wildest part of the state.

As N.M. 152 climbs toward the Black Range, the temperatures begin to cool. Tucked into the foothills, the quaint, not-quite ghost town of Hillsboro boomed in its mining heyday. It almost faded away afterward, but has come back to life with a handful of shops, a restaurant or two, and a little bit of lodging. Farther up into the mountains on the highway, oaks, junipers, and pines appear and then the even smaller hamlet of Kingston. Once it had several thousand residents; today only a few people live there.

At Kingston the highway enters the massive Gila National Forest, a 3.3-million acre expanse of rugged mountains with few people. The largest wilderness in the country, the Gila Wilderness forms the heart of the national forest. Famed conservationist Aldo Leopold spent lots of time here and convinced President Theodore Roosevelt of its special beauty, who in 1924 declared the area the first wilderness in the United States.

The road winds upward from Kingston to rugged Emory Pass, a heavily wooded divide that cuts through the Black Range. Hiking trails that lead deep into the Aldo Leopold Wilderness start at the pass and you’ll see other trailheads along the highway. At Santa Clara, N.M. 152 becomes U.S. 180 and continues west into Silver City, a scenic former mining town that serves as a great base camp for exploring the Gila area. The small city boasts a revitalized historical downtown with beautiful restored Victorian buildings from its mining heyday housing coffee shops, numerous art galleries, cute B&Bs, and classy wine bars with live jazz.

From Silver City, head north on windy N.M. 15 to Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. At the national monument, a short loop trail leads to cliff dwellings built by the ancient Mogollon people in alcoves high above the rushing waters of the Gila River’s West Fork.

If narrow winding roads with sheer drop-offs don’t bother you, take U.S. 180 from Silver City to N.M. 159, which leads to the former ghost town of Mogollon. The town clings to impossibly steep mountain slopes, with the heart of town squeezed into a narrow canyon. It went from several thousand people in the late 1800s almost to zero, but it again has a small number of year-round residents. The road continues up into the wooded mountains above the town, soon turning into a good gravel road. It offers endless views of lush forest with little sign of human intrusion. In fall, aspens color the mountain slopes. The Sandy Point Trailhead offers one of the most popular routes into the Gila Wilderness’ highest country, where the peaks approach 11,000 feet. The road continues on to the rushing trout stream at Willow Creek and then Snow Lake; both have campgrounds. From there you can drive to Reserve, another small mountain town with all visitor services.

From Reserve, continue northeast to Datil and eventually Socorro through miles of empty mountains and forest. In the high elevation Plains of San Agustin, you’ll be surprised to see rows of enormous radio telescopes seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Astronomers use the Very Large Array to study the universe. The movie Contact with Jodie Foster and other productions have made the remote site famous. A visitor center tells about the work that goes on there.

From the VLA, you’ll slowly descend through the small towns of Datil and Magdalena to Socorro in the Río Grande Valley at the end of our Southern New Mexico loop. Before heading back to Albuquerque 75 miles to the north, consider a short side trip south to Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. In winter, tens of thousands of snow geese and sandhill cranes reside in the fields and shallow ponds of the refuge. Visit at dawn when the birds are leaving for their feeding grounds. Thousands of geese and cranes can sometimes all be airborne at the same time, creating quite a spectacle. Afterwards, get a green chile cheeseburger at the Owl Café in San Antonio, where scientists working on the first atomic bomb at nearby Trinity Site used to stop in for lunch. Heading back to Albuquerque, you’ll need the time to absorb the history and beauty you’ve experienced, and to plan your next trip south.

Photographer/writer Laurence Parent has written 36 books, his latest being a large-format photography book, New Mexico Wild and Beautiful. His photos appear in Sierra Club, Audubon, Kodak, BrownTrout, Avalanche, Graphic Arts Center, Westcliffe, and many other calendars.