Carrizozo

The name doubles a grass. Carrizo is the reed grass that grew thick at the springs here and fed ranch cattle, and a ranch foreman named James Allcook is credited with adding a second zo to the word to show how much of it there was. The railroad town took the name when it was founded in 1899, and people now shorten it to Zozo. Before the railroad the country held little but ranches and a stage crossing, among them a large ranch belonging to Lawrence Murphy, of the Murphy-Dolan store in Lincoln.

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 — 19 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

• Malpais — 0.5 mi
• Carrizozo Woman's Club — 0.9 mi
• Carrizozo — 1.0 mi
• Carrizozo — 1.3 mi