Alamogordo
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Alamogordo

Alamogordo

Southeastern New Mexico town used as the practical base for White Sands and nearby desert canyons.

Locals call it simply "Alamo," and this southeastern New Mexico town packs more in than you might expect. White Sands is just 15 miles away, making Alamogordo the natural base for visiting the dunes. The zoo is the oldest in the Southwest, and the Old Toy Train Depot makes for a quirky museum stop. Oliver Lee State Park, just south of town, sits in a dramatic canyon that was once the site of battles between Apache tribes and the U.S. Army.

Guide

Day Trips

The Sacramento Mountains behind Alamogordo offer some excellent day trips. The Sunspot National Solar Observatory, about 32 miles up scenic byway NM-6563 on Sacramento Peak, has free self-guided tours and guided tours in summer. The drive through Lincoln National Forest is half the fun. White Sands is the obvious day trip at just 15 miles, and Cloudcroft in the mountains above makes a cool escape on a hot day.

Guide

Things to Do

Alamogordo punches above its weight for a small desert town. The big draw is White Sands just down the road, but the town itself has a handful of genuinely worthwhile stops — a century-old zoo, an oddball toy train museum, a Space History museum with actual hardware, and a dramatic canyon park just to the south. PistachioLand to the north and the Atari landfill to the south are for the connoisseurs. None of them will take more than a couple of hours, so it's easy to combine several in a day.