Oliver Lee Memorial State Park

State Park At The Mouth Of Dog Canyon On The Sacramento Escarpment Above The Tularosa Basin, With A Restored 1890s Ranch House Belonging To Oliver Lee And A Hard Trail Climbing The Canyon · Alamogordo, New Mexico

Dog Canyon cuts straight into the Sacramento escarpment above the Tularosa Basin, and because a spring runs in it, it has been used continuously for thousands of years - by Mescalero Apache who defended it repeatedly against US cavalry in the nineteenth century, and then by ranchers. Oliver Lee was one of them: a rancher, gunman and later state senator, implicated in the disappearance of Colonel Albert Fountain and his son in 1896 and acquitted, whose restored 1890s ranch house stands at the canyon mouth. The state park covers the mouth and the lower canyon, with a campground on the alluvial fan looking out over the white sands. The Dog Canyon trail climbs about three thousand feet up the escarpment in under six miles, which is considerably more serious than the park's size suggests, with no water and almost no shade on it. The easy half is the canyon mouth and the ranch house, and the best thing here is sunset from the campground, which looks west across the Tularosa Basin to the white sands forty miles away.

409 Dog Canyon Road, Alamogordo, Alamogordo, New Mexico, 88310, United States

Open all year, day and night, with a day-use fee collected at a self-service station. The visitor centre keeps daytime hours and closes in parts of winter. The restored Lee ranch house is opened for tours on announced days and by arrangement rather than continuously, which catches people out. The campground runs year round. The Dog Canyon National Recreation Trail is open in daylight and is not a place to be caught out after dark.

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