Pancho Villa State Park

State Park On The Site Of The 9 March 1916 Raid On Columbus By Pancho Villa, The Last Armed Incursion By A Foreign Force Into The Continental United States, And The Base For The Punitive Expedition That Followed · Columbus, New Mexico

Before dawn on 9 March 1916, several hundred of Pancho Villa's men crossed the border three miles away and attacked the town of Columbus and the US Army camp beside it. Around eighteen Americans and a much larger number of Villistas were killed, the town burned, and within a week General Pershing was leading ten thousand men into Mexico on the Punitive Expedition - which used aircraft and motor trucks in combat for the first time in American history and never caught Villa. It remains the last armed incursion by a foreign force into the continental United States. The state park covers the camp site, holds the surviving adobe buildings and a good exhibit building, and is planted as a botanical garden of Chihuahuan desert species. That it is named after the man who attacked it says something about how the border is remembered here, and the interpretation addresses that directly rather than avoiding it. The crossing at Palomas is three miles south and the campground fills with long-stay winter travellers.

400 NM Highway 9, Columbus, Columbus, New Mexico, 88029, United States

Open all year, day and night, with a day-use fee collected at the entrance. The visitor centre and exhibit building keep daytime hours and are closed on some holidays. The campground operates year round, part reservable. The cactus garden is walkable whenever the park is open. Commemorative events fall around 9 March, the anniversary of the raid, and draw visitors from both sides of the border.

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