Las Cruces

See

See New Mexico State University

It is in Las Cruces, with an interesting museum or two, a large conference center, and a comfortable student union.

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See New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum

East of NMSU on the way out into the countryside. This is a fairly substantial site based on a working cattle ranch, with demonstrations. You can spend half a day here; there are picnic tables as well as food available for purchase.

📍 4100 Dripping Springs Rd🕒 Mon-Sat 9AM-5PM, Sun noon-5PM💲 $3 (student and senior discounts)☎ +1 575 522-4100

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See Mesilla Valley Bosque State Park

🕒 Daily 7:30AM-4:30PM☎ +1 575 523-4398⚠ Last checked Feb 2018 — confirm before you go

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Do

Do Organ Mountains Desert Peaks National Monument

Just east of town offer good hiking and rock climbing. Follow University Avenue east from NMSU past the Farm and Ranch museum to one of the primary trailheads, in a small park (fee) with interpretive exhibit. Trails lead from here into the mountains. Some campground space is available (additional fee). The Organ Mountains Desert Peaks National Monument was established May 21, 2014.

📍 15000 Dripping Springs Rd🕒 8AM-5PM💲 $3☎ +1 575 522-1219⚠ Last checked Feb 2020 — confirm before you go

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Buy

The best place to buy Native American art or other characteristic types of durable mementos is in the nearby town of Mesilla. If you want something to remember your visit by, one idea is food, specifically chile peppers, which are grown in abundance in the Mesilla Valley. The long strings of red chiles that you see hanging from porches, gables, etc., are called ristras and are available for purchase at many locations. These are largely for ornamental purposes, but edible chiles are also widely available, with spiciness levels ranging from mild to downright inedible (New Mexico State University has a substantial chile research program that grows peppers so hot that they function as bug repellents).

If in town in late summer or fall, make a pilgrimage to the outlying town of Hatch on I-25 to the north. Hatch is the center of the chile-growing business and has several shops with chile paraphernalia. Better, it hosts a "Chile Festival" in early September, usually around Labor Day, that's fun to visit as well as a great source of chiles. (Hatch is a tiny town with little or no lodging, so you'll want to stay in Las Cruces and make a day trip to the Festival.) If you're getting your chiles for cooking rather than ornamentation, and can get them home/in a freezer quickly, get them roasted while you're there; roasting is a key step in preparation for the table, and doing it in a Hatch roaster will save you all manner of peculiar odors resulting from doing the roasting at home.

For more pedestrian, day-to-day purchases, Las Cruces has all of the usual shopping associated with a town of 80,000. Mesilla Valley Mall is off I-25 just north of NMSU.

Eat

• University Avenue, on the north side of NMSU, has the usual assortment of student-oriented eateries, with the usual properties for such places: lots of food, reasonable prices, less than haute cuisine. Some, by no means all, of the restaurants along University are:

Drink

A fine place for a drink or nightlife is in Old Mesilla, to the southwest of Las Cruces:

Other

Sleep