Friday, December 18, 2009 - Fort Stanton Cave Campground, Lincoln NM
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Eve Ball roadside marker, Lincoln NM, December 18, 2009
Today I planned to head up to Valley of Fires Recreation Area, Carrizozo NM. I never made it. I got waylaid by the jaw-dropping beauty of the rolling desert and grasslands along US 380 between Roswell and Carrizozo NM. I stopped to see what this Eve Ball roadside marker was all about and discovered I could camp right here.
With a little Googling (oh, how I do love this modern technology that lets me Google way out here!) I discovered the forest road across from the marker leads into the new Fort Stanton-Snowy River Cave National Conservation Area and up to the Fort Stanton Cave, the third largest cave in New Mexico. And a tiny little 3 site campground just beyond the entrance to the cave. Well, gee, this was just too good to pass up!
New Mexico State Parks News Release (pdf) issued December 17th, 2009
Contrary to a hearsay report I got this morning, the New Mexico State Parks will be closed December 24th which means no camping will be available in the park system the nights of December 23 and 24.
Official Scenic Historical Marker: Eve Ball (1890 - 1984)
AUTHOR AND PRESERVATIONIST
A pioneer in the preservation of the history of people in southeastern New Mexico, Eve wrote over 150 articles and numerous books chronicling Mescalero and Chiricahua Apaches, Anglo and Hispanic settlers. Her honesty, patience and determination to learn from them, won the confidence of the Apache elders, saving oral histories certain to be lost without her.
Night camp
Primitive Campground at Fort Stanton Cave, Lincoln NM
- This is a primitive campground with three sites and a single pit toilet.
- Verizon cell phone and Broadband service is good.
- Fort Stanton-Snowy River Cave National Conservation Area info
- Locate Fort Stanton Cave Campground on my Night Camps map
- Check the weather here
Wind on the Gangplank
There was almost no soil in that part of the range - just twelve miles' breadth of rough pink rock. "As you go from Chicago west, soil diminishes in thickness and fertility, and when you get to the gangplank and up here on top of the Laramie Range there is virtually none," Love said. "It's had ten million years to develop, and there's none. Why? Wind - that's why. The wind blows away everything smaller than gravel."
Standing in that wind was like standing in river rapids. It was a wind embellished with gusts, but, over all, it was primordially steady: a consistent southwest wind, which had been blowing that way not just through human history but in every age since the creation of the mountains - a record written clearly in wind - scored rock. Trees were widely scattered up there and, where they existed, appeared to be rooted in the rock itself. Their crowns looked like umbrellas that had been turned inside out and were streaming off the trunks downwind. "Wind erosion has tremendous significance in this part of the Rocky Mountain region," Love said, "Even down in Laramie, the trees are tilted. Old-timers used to say that a Wyoming wind gauge was an anvil on a length of chain. When the land was surveyed, the surveyors couldn't keep their tripods steady. They had to work by night or near sunrise. People went insane because of the wind." His mother, in her 1905 journal, said that Old Hanley, passing by the Twin Creek school, would disrupt lessons by making some excuse to step inside and light his pipe. She also described a man who was evidently losing to the wind his struggle to build a cabin: