Elephant Butte Lake State Park

State Park On The Largest Reservoir In New Mexico, Impounded By The 1916 Elephant Butte Dam On The Rio Grande; The Largest And Most Visited State Park In The State · Elephant Butte, New Mexico

Elephant Butte Dam was finished on the Rio Grande in 1916, at the time the largest irrigation dam in the world, and the reservoir behind it is still the largest body of water in New Mexico - around forty miles long with more than two hundred miles of shoreline when full. The state park around it is also the largest and the busiest in the state, and on a summer holiday weekend it can hold tens of thousands of people with boats, which is not an experience most of New Mexico offers. The caveat is in the words when full. This is a working irrigation reservoir on an over-allocated river in a drought-prone basin, and the level swings enormously between years; in bad years boat ramps have been left dry and beaches have moved hundreds of metres. The butte the lake is named for is a volcanic core that looks like an elephant from the right angle, and it is an island when the water is high and a hill on dry ground when it is not.

101 State Park Road, Elephant Butte, Elephant Butte, New Mexico, 87935, United States

Open all year, day and night, with a staffed entrance station and a day-use fee. The visitor centre keeps daytime hours and is closed on some holidays. Campgrounds operate year round with reduced services in winter. Boat ramps open and close with the water level rather than with the calendar, and in drought years several have been unusable for whole seasons. Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day weekends are by far the busiest.

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