The jagged granite spires of the Organ Mountains in low light above a slope of yuccas and desert grasses — Bob Wick, BLM / CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

New Mexico · Region

Las Cruces, the Gila & the Southwest

The Mesilla plaza under three flags, the first wilderness in the world, the Gila cliff dwellings, Mangas Coloradas and Victorio, and Villa's raid on Columbus.

5 places to explore

This is the homeland of the Chiricahua Apache, the Chihenne band at Ojo Caliente and the Bedonkohe in the Mogollon Mountains among them. Mangas Coloradas led them for thirty years; in January 1863 soldiers seized him under a flag of truce, and he was killed at Fort McLane. Victorio fought to keep his people at Ojo Caliente, refused removal to San Carlos, and was killed in Mexico in 1880. Long before them, Mimbres people painted the black-on-white bowls that are now in museums around the world, and Mogollon families built the Gila Cliff Dwellings into five caves in the 1270s.

In 1924 the Forest Service set aside the headwaters of the Gila as the first designated wilderness in the world, at the urging of a young forester named Aldo Leopold. Silver City and the open pit at Santa Rita grew on copper the Spanish were already mining around 1800. Down on the Mexican line, on March 9, 1916, Pancho Villa's men raided Columbus, killing ten civilians and eight soldiers, and General Pershing led an army into Mexico after him for most of a year.

Mesilla, on the Rio Grande, was laid out as a Mexican town in 1848 and became American with the Gadsden Purchase; the US flag went up over its plaza in 1854, and for a season in 1861 and 1862 it was the capital of Confederate Arizona. Billy the Kid was tried and sentenced to hang in its courthouse in 1881. Las Cruces grew up across the valley.

What to See in Las Cruces, the Gila & the Southwest

5 places across the region, grouped by what they are.

Geology & Rock Formations

City of Rocks State Park

Deming

Pinnacles of volcanic tuff up to forty feet high standing in the grassland between Deming and Silver City, worn out of an eruption 34.9 million years ago.

View details →

Historic Sites

Stone masonry walls and doorways of the Gila Cliff Dwellings tucked beneath a cave overhang

Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument

Silver City

Rooms built into five caves above a Gila side canyon in the late 1270s and lived in for about a generation, at the end of forty-four winding miles of mountain road from Silver City.

View details →

Mesilla Plaza

Mesilla

A plaza laid out in 1848 by people who meant to stay in Mexico, American six years later, a stage stop and Civil War headquarters, and scene of a deadly political riot in 1871.

View details →

Pancho Villa State Park

Columbus

The site of Camp Furlong at Columbus, named for the revolutionary whose raiders attacked the town in 1916, as a gesture of friendship toward Mexico.

View details →

Industry & Mining

The terraced walls and haul roads of the open-pit copper mine at Santa Rita, banded in yellow and red

Santa Rita Copper Mine

Hanover

The copper pit east of Silver City that swallowed the town it was named for, beneath a spire of volcanic rock long said to look like a nun at prayer.

View details →

Scenic Drives through Las Cruces, the Gila & the Southwest

Scenic Byway

NM-152 and NM-15: City of Rocks to the Gila Cliff Dwellings

From the volcanic pinnacles of City of Rocks up the Mimbres valley, past the Santa Rita copper pit and through Silver City, then over NM-15's mountain switchbacks to the Gila Cliff Dwellings.

89 mi · 3 hrs

Stories from Las Cruces, the Gila & the Southwest

Nature

The Wolves Came Back

The government spent half a century killing every wolf in the Southwest. Since 1998 it has been putting the Mexican wolf back, and the Gila country of New Mexico is now the heart of its range.

5 min read

Las Cruces, the Gila & the Southwest rewards the unhurried. Pick a base, fan out, and let the country between the headline stops surprise you.

← Explore more of Open Road Guide