Mountain Town

Drive south from Red River on NM 38, over Bobcat Pass, and the trees open onto the wide Moreno Valley. At the north end of a blue alpine lake, where US 64 meets NM 38, sits the village of Eagle Nest, at 8,216 feet, with just 315 residents in the 2020 census. Did you know it was not always called Eagle Nest? The settlement was first known as Therma, and it was only renamed Eagle Nest in the 1930s, after the dam and lake that changed everything here.

Drive to the west end of Red River, where Main Street gives out toward the canyon, and you reach 110 acres of river meadow that have been hosting travelers for nearly ninety years. Today the property is 4K River Ranch, at 1501 West Main Street. In 1936 it became Lewis Ranch — and the little slab-sided cabins its founder built there are still taking guests.

Drive the Enchanted Circle south from Eagle Nest, through the wide Moreno Valley, and you come to the youngest town on the loop. Angel Fire did not grow up around a mine or a railroad. It began as a cattle ranch, and the ski resort at its heart was dreamed up at the family dinner table. The LeBus family came from Wichita Falls, Texas, in 1954, after buying the roughly 10,000-acre Monte Verde Ranch. Two years later Roy LeBus and his brother G.F.