Enchanted Circle

Sunday, October 25, 2026

Sunday is starting cloudy and cool in Red River, near 37 degrees this morning after a 7:18 AM sunrise, with showers expected through the day, a high near 49, and sunset at 6:12 PM. Tonight rain is expected to change to snow showers as temperatures fall, and Monday should turn sunny with a high near 51. It is a good day for a slow Main Street stroll between showers, a warm drink, and a little town history, which in Red River is never more than a block or two away.

Saturday, October 24, 2026

Saturday is starting partly cloudy and cool in Red River, near 38 degrees this morning after a 7:17 AM sunrise, but this is a day to plan wildlife and scenery around the weather. A Flood Watch is in effect from 6 AM today until 6 AM Sunday, thunderstorms are expected by midday, and the high will only reach about 49, with rain very likely through the afternoon and evening and a low near 36 tonight. Sunset comes at 6:13 PM. The best window for being outdoors is this morning, in waterproof layers, before the storms build.

Friday, October 23, 2026

Friday is starting cool and damp in Red River, with a partly cloudy morning near 42 degrees, no weather alerts in effect, and afternoon showers on the way to a high near 57. Rain is likely tonight, with a low near 38, so pack the waterproof layers if you are arriving today and plan on a cozy Main Street evening. Sunset comes at 6:14 PM, and the late-season color still hanging on in the canyon should look rich in the wet light between showers.

Thursday, October 22, 2026

Thursday is starting wet in Red River. Morning rain showers brought a temperature of 44 degrees, very damp air, and wet pavement on Main Street, and no weather alerts were in effect for the town this morning. The rain is expected to ease as the morning goes on, giving way to mostly cloudy skies and an afternoon high near 57 degrees, with southwest winds picking up and gusts possible later in the day. It is a warm-drinks, slow-morning kind of start, with better light for a stroll between showers by afternoon.

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

If you have ever driven Interstate 25 down from Colorado toward Raton, Cimarron Canyon, and Red River, you have crossed Raton Pass — and in the 1800s, that gateway had a gatekeeper. He was Richens Lacy Wootton, a Virginia-born mountain man known as Uncle Dick, and he built a toll road over the roughest stretch of the Santa Fe Trail and charged every wagon that rolled through. Born on May 6, 1816, in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, Wootton lived one of the great character stories of the southern Rockies.

Long before prospectors named a mining camp Red River City, another community was already putting down roots on the same river, down the canyon where the water leaves the high country. Did you know that the Red River itself gave that first settlement its name? Rio Colorado is Spanish for Red River, and the families who built San Antonio del Rio Colorado, the village we know today as Questa, were farming and herding sheep along its banks a full generation before the gold rush remade the valley upstream.

Yes — it is the same mountain. The Baldy Mountain that looms over the old Maxwell Land Grant stories is the very peak that Scouts today know as Mt Baldy, the highest point of Philmont Scout Ranch. At 12,441 feet, Baldy is the tallest summit in the Cimarron Range, rising some 3,640 feet straight out of the Moreno Valley about six miles northeast of Eagle Nest — close enough to Red River that its bare, treeless crown is part of the skyline this whole valley lives under.