Southwestern New Mexico
We’ve compiled the best of the best in Southwestern New Mexico - browse our top choices for the top things to see or do during your stay.
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1. Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge
Hundreds of different types of birds, including snow geese, cranes, herons, and eagles, can be spotted from viewing platforms and directly through your car window at the popular Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. Besides serving as a rest stop for migrating birds, the Bosque del Apache also shelters mule deer, turkeys, quail, and other wildlife. Photo opportunities abound on the 12-mile auto loop tour; you can also hike through arid shrub land or bike through the refuge or take a van tour. October and November are the months the cottonwoods show their colors. In winter months, the refuge echoes with the haunting cries of whooping cranes flocking for the evening. Snow geese are so thick on lakes at times that shores are white with feathers washed ashore. Whether you're a bird-watcher or not, it is well worth bringing binoculars or a spotting scope to get some idea of how many varieties of birds land here (nearly 400 species have been spotted since 1940). The Festival of the Cranes () in mid-November draws thousands of people.
View Tours and Activities1001 NM 1, San Antonio, New Mexico, 87832, USA575-835–1828Sight Details
Rate Includes: $5 per vehicle, Refuge daily dawn–dusk; visitor center weekdays 7:30–4, weekends 8–4:30; tour road open Apr.–Sept. -
2. Branigan Cultural Center
The Branigan Cultural Center, in a striking 1935 Pueblo Revival building embellished inside with murals by Tom Lea, offers compelling programs covering such topics as the 1942–1964 Bracero Program (a Mexican guest workers initiative), or a reflection on Frida Kahlo's later years through rarely seen photographs, along with rotating exhibits covering local history and culture.The city-run Branigan is a focal point—along with the Las Cruces Museum of Art next door—of the revitalized downtown.
501 N. Main St., Las Cruces, New Mexico, 88001, USA575-541–2154Sight Details
Rate Includes: Free, Tues.–Sat. 9–4:30, Closed Sun. and Mon. -
3. Farmers & Crafts Market of Las Cruces
If you're in town on a Wednesday or Saturday, don't miss one of the Southwest's largest and most impressive farmers markets, where some 300 vendors sell produce, handcrafted items, baked goods, and even geodes and fossils along a lively seven-block stretch of the city's lively downtown. Mingle with the locals and enjoy the scene, which is open between 8:30 am and 1 pm.
Main St., Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA -
4. Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument
At Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument the mystery of the Mogollon (muh-gee-yohn) people's short-lived occupation of the deeply recessed caves high above the canyon floor may never be resolved. But the finely detailed stone dwellings they left behind stand in silent testimony to the challenges as well as the beauty of the surrounding Gila Wilderness. Built and inhabited for a span of barely two generations, from 1280 to the early 1300s AD, its 42 rooms are tucked into six natural caves that are reached via a rugged one-mile loop trail that ascends 180 feet from the trail head. Constructed from the same pale volcanic stone as the cliffs themselves, the rooms are all but camouflaged until you are about a half-mile along the trail. You can contemplate, from a rare close-up vantage point, the keyhole doorways that punctuate the dwelling walls and gaze out upon a ponderosa pine- and cottonwood-forested terrain that looks much like the one the Mogollon people inhabited seven centuries ago. The wealth of pottery, yucca sandals, tools, and other artifacts buried here were picked clean by the late 1800s—dispersed to private collectors. But the visitor center has a small museum with books and other materials about the wilderness, its trails, and the Mogollon. It's a 2-mile drive from the visitor center to the Dwellings trail head (and other nearby trails); there are interesting pictographs to be seen on the wheelchair-accessible Trail to the Past. Allow a good 2 hours from Silver City to the Cliff Dwellings via NM 15 or via NM 35; though longer in mileage, the NM 35 route is an easier ride. If you can spare the time, spend the night at one of the mountain inns close to the dwellings to maximize your time in the park.
26 Big Jim Bradford Trail, New Mexico, 88049, USA575-536–9461Sight Details
Rate Includes: Free, Monument late May–early Sept., daily 8–6; early Sept.–late May, daily 9–4. Visitor center late May–early Sept., daily 8–5; early Sept.–late May, daily 8–4:30 -
5. Lightning Field
The sculptor Walter De Maria created Lightning Field, a work of land art composed of 400 stainless-steel poles of varying heights (the average is about 20 feet, although they create a horizontal plane) arranged in a rectangular grid over 1 mile by ½ mile of flat, isolated terrain, and installed in 1977. Groups of up to six people are permitted to stay overnight from May through October—the only way you can experience the artwork—at a rustic on-site 1930s cabin. Fees include dinner and breakfast, and range from $600 (May to June, September to October) to $1,000 (July to August) per group; additional people incur extra fees. Dia Art Foundation administers Lightning Field, shuttling visitors from Quemado to the sculpture, which is on private land 45 minutes to the northeast. Thunder-and-lightning storms are most common from July to mid-September; book way ahead for visits during this time. If you're lucky, you'll see flashes you'll never forget (though lightning isn't required for the sculpture to be stunning in effect).
Quemado, New Mexico, USA505-898–3335-reservationsSight Details
Rate Includes: May–Oct., Reservations essential -
Recommended Fodor’s Video
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6. New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum
This handsomely designed museum east of town, near the Organ Mountains, documents 3,000 years of agriculture in New Mexico and the Southwest. Visit a re-creation of a 1,200-year-old Mogollon farmhouse, based on styles built by some of the first nonnomadic people to live in what is now New Mexico. Longhorn cattle, Churro sheep, and dairy cows are among the heritage breeds—descendants of animals the Spanish brought from Mexico—raised at the museum. At milking times, you can learn about the history of dairy farming in New Mexico, or take a look in the "beef barn" where six different breeds of beef cattle are housed. A span of the historic Green Bridge, which used to span the Hondo River, has been reassembled over the arroyo on the grounds. Chuck-wagon cooking demonstrations are offered during special events.
4100 Dripping Springs Rd., Las Cruces, New Mexico, 88011, USA575-522–4100Sight Details
Rate Includes: $5, Mon.–Sat. 9–5, Sun. noon–5, Closed Sun. -
7. Trinity Site
Only a monument remains at Trinity Site, where the world's first atomic bomb exploded, on July 16, 1945. The resulting crater has been filled in, but the test site and monument are open for public viewing and self-guided tours two days of the year (the first Satudays in April and October). The McDonald ranch house, where the first plutonium core for the bomb was assembled, can be toured on those days. Picnic tables are available. It's wheelchair-accessible. There are no vehicle services or gas at the site, and visitors must bring their own food and water.
Socorro, New Mexico, 88002, USA575-678–1134Sight Details
Rate Includes: Free, 1st Sat. of Apr. and Oct., gate open 8–2 -
8. Very Large Array
With its 27 glistening-white 80-foot radio-telescope antennae arranged in patterns (their configuration is altered every four months or so), the Very Large Array is a startling sight when spotted along the Plains of San Augustin. The complex's dish-shaped "ears," each weighing 230 tons, are tuned in to the cosmos. The array is part of a series of facilities that compose the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. The antennas, which provided an impressive backdrop for the movie Contact, based on the Carl Sagan book, form the largest, most advanced radio telescope in the world. The telescope chronicles the birth and death of stars and galaxies from 10 to 12 billion light-years away. Hundreds of scientists from around the world travel to this windy, remote spot to research black holes, colliding galaxies, and exploding stars, as well as to chart the movements of planets. Visitors are permitted to stroll right up to the array on a self-guided walking tour that begins at the unstaffed visitor center. Staff members emphasize that their work does not involve a search for life on other planets.
NM 52, south off U.S. 60, Magdalena, New Mexico, 87801, USA575-835–7410Sight Details
Rate Includes: $6 per adult, Daily 8:30–dusk
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