Bottomless Lakes State Park

East of Roswell the Pecos valley is edged by low red bluffs, and along their foot lie nine small, deep lakes. Each is a sinkhole: water moving underground dissolved the rock beneath, the ground above collapsed into the hollow, and water filled it. The story goes that vaqueros tied two or three ropes together, lowered them, never found bottom, and called the lakes bottomless; the blue-green color the algae give the water adds to the illusion. The deepest, Lea Lake and Lazy Lagoon, go down about 90 feet.

The lakes were made a state monument in November 1933 and became the first state park in New Mexico. Civilian Conservation Corps crews built its roads and shelters in the 1930s, along with the pavilion and water tower at Lea Lake, a mix of rustic park style and New Mexico adobe forms. Swimming is allowed only at Lea Lake, which has a sandy beach and the main campground, and divers use it too.

Rare small fish live on in these isolated pools, among them the Pecos pupfish and the rainwater killifish. Around the park, visitors pick up Pecos diamonds, small double-pointed quartz crystals that weather out of the ground. The park is reached by going twelve miles east of Roswell on US-380 and then seven miles south on NM-409.