Las Cruces



Las Cruces is a city in New Mexico. The name means "the crosses" in Spanish. It is the state's second largest city, with a population of over 111,000 (in 2020), and is the site of New Mexico State University.

By car
& Las Cruces is located at the junction of Interstate Highways 10 and 25 and is the southern terminus of the latter. The nearest airport with commercial air service is in El Paso, Texas, about away. Limited bus service is available between El Paso and Albuquerque with stops in Las Cruces.



By bus
The serves as the central bus station for:



The following have their own bus station or stop in other parts of the city:

Get around
Las Cruces has some degree of public transportation by the city bus line RoadRUNNER Transit. Service is limited to Monday through Saturday and ends by 7:30 in the evening. Buses can carry bicycles. Otherwise, just plan to drive, bike, or walk.

Buy
The best place to buy Native American art or other characteristic types of durable mementos is in the nearby town of Mesilla. If you want something to remember your visit by, one idea is food, specifically chile peppers, which are grown in abundance in the Mesilla Valley. The long strings of red chiles that you see hanging from porches, gables, etc., are called ristras and are available for purchase at many locations. These are largely for ornamental purposes, but edible chiles are also widely available, with spiciness levels ranging from mild to downright inedible (New Mexico State University has a substantial chile research program that grows peppers so hot that they function as bug repellents).

If in town in late summer or fall, make a pilgrimage to the outlying town of Hatch on I-25 to the north. Hatch is the center of the chile-growing business and has several shops with chile paraphernalia. Better, it hosts a "Chile Festival" in early September, usually around Labor Day, that's fun to visit as well as a great source of chiles. (Hatch is a tiny town with little or no lodging, so you'll want to stay in Las Cruces and make a day trip to the Festival.) If you're getting your chiles for cooking rather than ornamentation, and can get them home/in a freezer quickly, get them roasted while you're there; roasting is a key step in preparation for the table, and doing it in a Hatch roaster will save you all manner of peculiar odors resulting from doing the roasting at home.

For more pedestrian, day-to-day purchases, Las Cruces has all of the usual shopping associated with a town of 80,000. Mesilla Valley Mall is off I-25 just north of NMSU.

Eat

 * University Avenue, on the north side of NMSU, has the usual assortment of student-oriented eateries, with the usual properties for such places: lots of food, reasonable prices, less than haute cuisine. Some, by no means all, of the restaurants along University are:
 * University Avenue, on the north side of NMSU, has the usual assortment of student-oriented eateries, with the usual properties for such places: lots of food, reasonable prices, less than haute cuisine. Some, by no means all, of the restaurants along University are:

Drink
A fine place for a drink or nightlife is in Old Mesilla, to the southwest of Las Cruces:

Go next

 * El Paso is about away via I-10, and Juarez, Mexico slightly beyond.
 * White Sands National Park is less than an hour's drive from Las Cruces.
 * Ski Apache is about away.  Decent skiing just past the town of Ruidoso.
 * White Sands Missile Range is a short detour on the way to White Sands National Park and has a missile museum.
 * New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo is great for young space exploration enthusiasts - especially the shuttle flight simulator.
 * Cloudcroft is about away with breathtaking views and mountains.
 * If you're in the vicinity in the latter part of August, consider driving west on I-10 to the Great American Duck Race -- seriously -- in the small town of Deming.
 * Truth or Consequences, about north of Las Cruces and commonly called "T or C," has traveler-friendly hot springs.  The new Spaceport America -- again, seriously! -- will be constructed about  southeast of T or C, and should be easily accessible from Las Cruces.