Oliver Lee State Park - Oct 2005

Oliver Lee Memorial State Park is located 12 miles south of Alamogordo, New Mexico. It's in a high desert setting at the base of the Sacramento Mountains. The park is small -- having only about 30 campsites, but it has new facilities that were kept in immaculate condition. The only problem with the campsites is that most of them were not level. I think ours was one of the worst and we had to use all of our blocks just to get level. That said, our views were incredible and worth the extra effort of getting set up.

The campground was terraced such that every site had a wonderful view. The eastward view towards the mountains was awesome with the peaks looming above us and off to the west, we could see White Sands National Park in the distance. We often had beautiful sunsets that made the white sand glow pink.

There was a surprising amount of vegetation for being an arid region -- cactus, yucca and mesquite to name a few, but also sage and creosote bushes. The park had a small, but well done botanical garden with a wide assortment of nicely labeled cacti and succulents. This turpentine bush was lovely in it's full bloom of yellow blossoms. It was literally buzzing with hundreds of bees, so I didn't get too close to check out it's fragrance.

One of the interestings features of the park was Dog Canyon. Over a hundred years ago, the land was a part of a large cattle ranch and the owner, Oliver Lee, had done something kind of unique for the time. He had constructed a concrete channel up in the canyon to bring the water down to his ranch for his cattle to drink as well as for irrigation. In addition to a fairly modern ranch house, he had built a school room for his eight children, a slaughter house, several barns and he also planted a fruit tree orchard as well as some grape vines. The state park service was in the process of restoring some of these structures and we went a guided tour of the ranch house. We thought it was interesting that in the early 70s, the property had been used in a Disney movie.

Another neat feature of the park was the unique "trail" back into Dog Canyon -- it was a boardwalk structure that was built high above the creek to protect the delicate "wet zone" that surrounds the creek. We saw plants such as reeds, cat-tails, ferns, columbines and even orchids -- unusual for such an arid region. There were a few trees in the canyon and it's claimed to be a popular resting place for migrating birds.

This campground was certainly a good place to be situated in order to tour all the nearby attractions including the Museum of Space History, the White Sands National Park, the Sunspot Observatory and the mountain town of Cloudcroft. (See separate posts.) It was also close enough to Alamogordo for us to take trips into town for shopping and dining. We had excellent weather while here -- sunny, warm days and cool nights and we enjoyed the scenery as well as spectacular views.