Tiny Ramah is located in a lush valley rimmed with sandstone cliffs, south of Gallup and east of Zuni Pueblo. It started as a Mormon colony in the 1870s and continues today as a small ranching and farming settlement — tall cottonwood trees shade sandstone houses built in the previous century. For whatever reason, it made Frommer's top-10 list of up-and-coming tourism destinations. The locals are all puzzled about this.
The attraction, such as it is, is the surrounding landscape: the Zuni Mountains rise to the south, Ramah Lake sits just west of town, and El Morro National Monument — with its extraordinary collection of ancient and historical inscriptions carved into a sandstone bluff — is a 30-minute drive. El Malpais National Monument, a surreal landscape of black lava flows and ice caves near Grants, is less than an hour to the northeast. Ramah makes an honest, unhurried base for exploring western New Mexico without the crowds of Santa Fe or Taos.