The Best Places

Las Cruces, New Mexico

Writing by Rich on April 11, 2007

Las Cruces is turning out to be a mixed bag. On the one hand, it sprawls across the landscape and has little in the way of a downtown. Though it’s a university town, we didn’t see the usual strip of nightclubs, record stores and ethnic restaurants.

On the other hand, with 80,000 residents, Las Cruces has nearly everything you need in terms of retail and services. Real estate seems to be quite reasonable here - we saw a nicely renovated bungalow in a historic district today for just over $200K. And while we’ve yet to see a truly hip part of Las Cruces proper, the historic town of Mesilla, a few miles south, is very cool. There are a lot of neat old adobe homes in the area, though they do seem to bring a premium.

We got in a nice hike to Baylor Pass, but some unusually late (and strong) spring winds made for a breezy hike, and they are spawning dust devils across the landscape.

Las Cruces is nice, but I’m not sure if it’s nicer than Albuquerque. I guess that at the end of the trip, I’ll need to do some comparing and contrasting.

Next stop, Silver City.

Category: Best cities and towns

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