Sugarite Canyon State Park

State Park On The Colorado Line Above Raton, On The Site Of The Sugarite Coal Camp That Housed Around A Thousand People Between 1910 And 1941; Basalt Mesas, Two Lakes And The Stone Foundations Of The Camp · Raton, New Mexico

Between 1910 and 1941 about a thousand people lived in a coal camp up this canyon - miners from Italy, Mexico, Japan, Greece and a dozen other places, with a school, a store and a baseball team - and when the mine closed the buildings were pulled down and sold. What is left is stone foundations, terraces and the odd wall along the canyon floor, marked out with interpretive signs that are considerably better than a small state park needs. Around them the park runs up a canyon between basalt mesas to the Colorado line, with two lakes, ponderosa and Gambel oak on the slopes, and enough elevation that it is green when the plains below are brown. It is the only state park in the far northeast corner of New Mexico, it is ten minutes from Raton and I-25, and almost nobody stops. October is the month to come, when the Gambel oak turns the slopes red and the elk are in the meadows, and Lake Maloya fishes year round including through the ice in a hard winter, which is unusual this far south. The north end of the park is in Colorado, which matters if you are fishing.

211 NM Highway 526, Raton, Raton, New Mexico, 87740, United States

Open all year, day and night, with a day-use fee. The visitor centre keeps daytime hours and closes in parts of winter. Campgrounds operate roughly from spring to autumn with water off outside that. Lake Maloya is open to fishing year round including through the ice in hard winters, with no-wake boating only. Snow closes the higher trails and the road to the upper lakes in winter. The park straddles the Colorado line and the north end is in Colorado.

Sugarite Canyon State Park on Spottos · Explore more places on Spottos