| New Site | Old Home | Search | Communities | Counties | Southeast | Southwest | |
 |
| |
| ||||||||||||
Otero County Guide
Last updated on Thursday, February 20, 2003
It began with our stop at Three Rivers Trading Post at the junction of Highway 54 and the road to the petroglyphs. It was obvious that the trading post had been there many years, had undergone many revisions and had been a very important crossroads, railroad stop and social center for the area. Behind the trading post stood the brightly painted red and white schoolhouse, its charm and antiquity begging to be released from its overgrown surroundings and to once again serve a useful purpose. Alamogordo had its official beginning in June, 1898, when the El Paso and Northwestern Railroad, owned by Charles B. Eddy, reached the town. Mr. Eddy was very influential in the founding of Alamogordo. He planned a community with large wide thoroughfares and irrigation ditches lined with trees. The name of this community was derived from those trees. They were large cottonwoods and "Alamo Gordo" in Spanish translates to "fat cottonwood." As seasoned science-fiction fans, Allison and I approached Alamogordo's Space Center with questions about liftoff velocity, orbital trajectories, and re-entry temperatures. Avid readers of Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, our minds were open to ideas regarding black holes, red planets, and little green men. We were, after all, enroute to one of the bastions of twentieth-century science: the NASA space program. Years of watching televised liftoffs and landings had left me an expert. I'd even had a tour of Spar Aerospace, where one of my ham radio buddies worked. The Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation headquarters is located in the town of Mescalero, on US 70 seventeen miles northeast of Tularosoa. Originally established on May 27, 1873 by Executive Order of President Ulysses S. Grant, the reservation was first located near Fort Stanton. The present reservation was established in 1883, covering 463,000 acres between the White and Sacramento mountains, all in Tribal Ownership status. Cloudcroft, at an elevation of 8,650 feet, population 750, draws its name from its height: It is one of the highest towns in New Mexico. In 1899 Charles B. Eddy built a branch line of the El Paso and Northeastern Railroad to Cloudcroft from Alamogordo. The Railroad built a lodge for its workers which was also used as a summer resort for El Pasoans. The village grew around The Lodge. It burned in 1919 but was rebuilt and is still open, complete with the ghost of Rebecca. The nine-hole Lodge golf course at 9,200 feet is the highest in the state. It is said golfers are warned not to feed the bears on the ninth green. If you're one of those persons who always wonders "where does that road go," and who likes the wide-open spaces of New Mexico, including sparse traffic and two lane roads, then discovering these seven hamlets is a pleasant adventure. From Roswell, take U.S. 285 south to Artesia, then U.S. 82 west. Hope, 21 miles west of Artesia, was settled about 1884 and was known as Badgerville or Badger because the settlers lived in dugouts. When the post office was established in 1890 it was called Hope. There are differing legends about the origin of the name. Eleven miles northeast of Alamogordo on U.S. 82 are the almost twin communities of High Rolls and Mountain Park. It is this part of the road that traverses several life zones after it leaves the Alamogordo area because it rises about forty-five hundred feet within sixteen miles. Before you reach High Rolls, there is a rest stop that provides a panoramic view to the west of White Sands and the Tularosa valley. Just east of this stop is the entrance to the only tunnel in New Mexico. Prior to 1922, if you entered New Mexico via US 54 from El Paso (if that road existed then), Newman was the first outpost, located on the New Mexico/Texas state line. It was a railroad stop and trading post, named for L. E. Newman. He was a Texas real estate man who sold building sites here. The post office existed from 1906-1922. Originally the settlement was called Longhorn, then Hereford, then Newman. Very little came of the development, and the site was moved to El Paso County, Texas. One source says the post office closed in 1914. One wonders which report is correct. Archeologists believe it was the site of a prehistoric Indian pueblo. On a warm January day I climbed Round Mountain to see what I could see. The cone shaped peak was 1000 feet above the 4500 foot high desert floor. My sea level legs and lungs strained into a climb that should have been easy. The path up was actually a shallow gully washed out by rain. Yucca challenged my progress with drawn bayonets. Here and there a cluster of juniper had to be sidestepped or crawled through. The altitude, more than the steepness, left me wheezing at the top, leaning against an immense granite boulder. The top is solid rock. Although Tularosa derives its name from the Spanish word tule meaning reeds or cattails, City of Roses is much more appealing and conjures up the picturesque town that Tularosa is.
Original settlers in the 1860s came from washed-out villages on the Rio Grande near Mesilla. Due to frequent raids by the Apaches from what is now the Mescalero/Apache Reservation, occupation was untenable and the site was abandoned.
In the years immediately before the outbreak of the Civil War, the Board of Indian Commissioners in Washington, D.C. had discussed a policy of removal and concentration for the Southern Apaches of New Mexico and Arizona Territories. Simply put, the policy called for the removal of the Mimbres, Central Chiracahuas, Coyoteros, Gila, and Mogollon bands from those areas where they would have potentially disruptive contact with white settlers and placement on reservations where they could become self-supporting through farming and animal husbandry.Over half-a-million visitors a year enjoy the world's largest gypsum dune field at White Sands National Monument in Southern New Mexico. The sparkling white dunes are ever-changing, ever-moving and ever-growing
Where does the gypsum originate? It is constantly added to the dunes from its source in Lake Lucero. Comparatively few visitors see the ten-square-mile lake bed, even though it is part of the monument, and, with a little planning, is accessible to everyone.
At first site, Oliver Lee Memorial State Park in southern New Mexico might seem merely a quiet, off-the-beaten-path, sun-backed stretch of the Chihuahuan Desert. The stillness of the landscape, the massive towering cliffs that form a Hollywood-like set backdrop to the Park, even the occasional, swirling dust clouds that meander through the mesquite and yucca desert might give one the impression of quiet permanence. However, a closer look reveals much more.
|
||||||||||||