Skip to main content

2016 Cross-Country Road Trip Part 3; Carlsbad Caverns National Park, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, and the desolate expanse of US 180/62

After entering southeast New Mexico I passed through the cities of Hobbs and Carlsbad on US 180/62 westbound on New Mexico State Route 7 to Whites City where I reached the Guadalupe Range.  My next stop was at the end of NM 7 at Carlsbad Caverns National Park.


Carlsbad Caverns actually has an onsite kennel to drop animals off at.  After dropping my dog off I made my way through the visitor center to the natural entrance of the caverns.





Carlsbad Caverns is a series of limestone caverns underneath the Guadalupe Range.  The primary attraction is the Carlsbad Cavern which one of 119 caverns located at Carlsbad Caverns National Park.  Carlsbad Cavern contains the fifth largest cave chamber in the United States which is known as the "Big Room."  Carlsbad Cavern the surrounding caverns are known for their calcite formations which were formed when there was a high ground water table in the Guadalupe Range.

Carlsbad Caverns National Monument was created in 1923 but it was later bumped up to National Park status in 1930.  Carlsbad Cavern does have a 750 foot elevator which descends from the visitor center that opened in 1932.  However, the elevator was down and I had no intention of using it anyways given the hiking trail was something I familiar with from a previous visit in 2012.  I quickly made my way through the switchbacks into Carlsbad Cavern.


Upon the descent from the switchbacks the depth of Carlsbad Cavern is obvious as it stretches downward into the darkness.  Carlsbad Cavern is very well lit and the descending trail is paved all the way to the bottom.

It 

Looking back upwards at the cave entrance the last glimpse of sunlight can be seen.


The trail downwards is fairly easy.   I want to say it took me only about 40 minutes to get to the bottom even stopping to get photos of the calcite formations.






The terrain of the Big Room is obvious due to the cavern terrain flattening out.



The Big Room has walking paths around the perimeter of the room which displays some of the best calcite formations.






I particularly liked the limestone pools given they had perfectly clear water.



After spending about four hours down in Carlsbad Cavern I made my ascent and picked up my dog before heading back to US 180/62.  US 180/62 dips back into Texas near the boundary for Guadalupe Mountains National Park.







Guadalupe Mountains National Park consists of much of the Guadalupe Range which isn't part of Carlsbad Caverns National Park.  The Guadalupe Range stretches 65 from western Texas into southeast New Mexico.  The Guadalupe Range is the highest mountains in Texas with the highest peak being Guadalupe Peak at 8,751.  Back in 2012 I hiked Guadalupe Peak but the weather was looking really bad over the range.  I had planned on stopping to walk to the ruins of the Butterfield Stage Station but I passed it up due to the possibility of a snow shower.  I made my way westward to lower elevations on US 180/62 but stopped to see the overlook for the 8,045 foot El Captain.




US 180/62 between Whites City in New Mexico westward to El Paso is one of the most desolate highways in the Continental United States with an approximately 120 mile stretch no services.  West of the junction with TX 54 along US 180/62 in Hudspeth County is the ruins of the community of Salt Flat.  Salt Flat was settled in the 1920s to service the new highway between El Paso and Carlsbad.  US 62 was extended to El Paso in 1932 and US 180 was added by 1944.  Salt Flat apparently had as many as 50 residents at one point but all that remains today is crumbling buildings that used to service travelers.




Salt Flat is named after a nearby dry lake which is at the foot the Guadalupe Range.  There is a series of gypsum sand dunes on the northeast side of the Salt Flat that are within the boundary of Guadalupe Mountains National Park.  The Salt Flats were the location of the 1877-78 San Elizario Salt War which claimed over 25 lives.


After crossing the barren wastes of US 180/62 I stopped for gas in El Paso and took the recently completed TX 375 to I-10 near the New Mexico State Line.



Heading west on I-10 westbound I reentered New Mexico.  I pulled off of I-10 onto the I-10 Business Loop in Las Cruces for the night.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

  Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third

Old River Lock & Control Structure (Lettsworth, LA)

  The Old River Control Structure (ORCS) and its connecting satellite facilities combine to form one of the most impressive flood control complexes in North America. Located along the west bank of the Mississippi River near the confluence with the Red River and Atchafalaya River nearby, this structure system was fundamentally made possible by the Flood Control Act of 1928 that was passed by the United States Congress in the aftermath of the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 however a second, less obvious motivation influenced the construction here. The Mississippi River’s channel has gradually elongated and meandered in the area over the centuries, creating new oxbows and sandbars that made navigation of the river challenging and time-consuming through the steamboat era of the 1800s. This treacherous area of the river known as “Turnbull’s Bend” was where the mouth of the Red River was located that the upriver end of the bend and the Atchafalaya River, then effectively an outflow

California State Route 203 the proposed Minaret Summit Highway

California State Route 203 is an approximately nine-mile State Highway located near Mammoth Lakes in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Mono County.  California State Route 203 as presently configured begins at US Route 395, passes through Mammoth Lakes and terminates at the Madera County line at Minaret Summit.  What is now California State Route 203 was added to the State Highway System in 1933 as Legislative Route Number 112.  The original Mammoth Lakes State Highway ended at Lake Mary near the site of Old Mammoth and was renumbered to California State Route 203 in 1964.  The modern alignment of the highway to Minaret Summit was adopted during 1967.   The corridor of Minaret Summit and Mammoth Pass have been subject to numerous proposed Trans-Sierra Highways.  The first corridor was proposed over Mammoth Pass following a Southern Pacific Railroad survey in 1901.  In 1931 a corridor between the Minarets Wilderness and High Sierra Peaks Wilderness was reserved by the Forest Service for po