Oro Grande, New Mexico

Oro Grande is located at the south east tip of the White Sands Military Reservation, about half way between El Paso, TX and Alamogordo, NM. The first time we drove through Oro Grande we were heading up to the New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo with Husband’s dad. The town is tiny…you know the type that if you blink you will miss it. The main drag consists of a gas station, a tavern, an RV park, a one room school house, and a post office. Set back off of the main drag are maybe 9 or 10 mobile homes. While tiny, to me it had kind of a quirky character. My kinda town. Oro Grande was a mining town established in 1905 and was originally called Jarilla Junction due to its proximity to the Jarilla Mountains. The name was changed to Oro Grande (Big Gold) during the 1906 gold rush. The population of Oro Grande boomed to 2000 during that time, but quickly collapsed when it was found there was far less gold than expected. If you were to Google Oro Grande you would find that most sites have it listed as a ghost town.So why would a ghost town have a gas station, a tavern and a post office? That would be because Oro Grande is not a ghost town at all. While I would guess the population as less than 20 people, there are people there. In the few seconds it took us to drive through town Husband’s dad told us that in the early 1980s they started to put in the infrastructure for Oro Grange to once again be a booming town. Ronald Reagan had this idea for the use ground and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic missles. It was loving dubbed “Star Wars”. This program would take place at White Sands Missile Range. The people who had jobs created by this program would live in Oro Grande. Well we all know how that worked out. Anyway…like I said it was a quirky town and I wanted to take pictures of it. Even though I exclaimed that I thought it was a great little town and I that I would like to take some pictures…we didn’t stop. Coming or going. Boo! I was bummed but had a plan. I asked husband if we could detour our route north to Denver so that we could go through Oro Grande. And because he loves me and wants me to be happy he agreed. It worked out well because the light first thing in the morning was way better than the harsh desert light in the middle of the day.