Carrizozo

Becoming county seat took a vote and then a lawsuit. In 1909 Lincoln County's voters moved the seat from Lincoln, the old town at the heart of the county war, to this railroad town, and the fight over the move ran four years and reached the United States Supreme Court before Carrizozo won it. Business had been drifting this way already: the Outlook, a Republican weekly, moved down from White Oaks in December 1906, as the mining town failed to live up to its promise.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Carrizozo Population 1,222 Elevation 5,438 Ft Carrizozo, county seat of Lincoln County, was established in 1899, a new town on the El Paso and Northeastern Railroad. The ghost town of White Oaks, once a boom- ing mining camp, is nearby. Billy the Kid, Sheriff Pat Garrett, Gov- ernor Lew Wallace, and Albert Bacon Fall all figured prominently in the history of the area.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Smokey Bear Historical Park — 18 mi
  The small park in Capitan where the living Smokey Bear is buried, a cub found clinging to a burned tree in the Capitan Mountains in 1950, six years after the cartoon was invented.
• Three Rivers Petroglyph Site — 22 mi
  More than 21,000 petroglyphs on a basalt ridge above the Tularosa Basin, one of the few places in the Southwest set aside for its rock art alone, walked on a rough half-mile trail.

More markers nearby

• Carrizozo — 0.6 mi
• Carrizozo Woman's Club — 0.8 mi
• Carrizozo — 1.2 mi
• Carrizozo — 1.4 mi