Dripping Springs, Las Cruces, New Mexico

This has to be one of the greenest deserts in the world! As I write this, it is raining again (the locals call summer the "monsoon season"), and even the BLM "Natural Area" behind town is called "Dripping Springs". The last time we tried to visit there, it was too rainy, so this Saturday we made a return trip.Dripping Springs sits at the base of the Organ Mountains, which form a striking backdrop to the town of Las Cruces. Around the turn of the century, a stagecoach service carried visitors the 17 miles from town into this resort area.
It's about a mile and a half stroll up the valley from the visitors' center to the spring and other attractions.Some take the slow & steady approach to the trek...
...while others of us chose to rest along the way.
Cacti along the path were in bloom, as were a variety of wildflowers. On reviewing my photos back at home, I discovered an unnoticed addition -- a bug is posing in the picture above. Can you see it? Click on the photo to see it full size or... ...here is the same photo magnified...

...and magnified again.

We haven't said much about our new camera since mentioning that the old one was dying during our visit to Carlsbad Caverns. But this serves as an apt illustration of its capabilities. Ten megapixels provides about all the detail I can imagine us needing!

Thanks to our recent rains, "Dripping Springs" was more like "Cascading Springs". (This picture is easier to interpret in large format -- just click on it.) Near the springs stand the ruins of the Van Patten Mountain Camp, turn-of-the-century resort to which the stagecoach would carry visitors. It's amazing, when I think about it, that they would travel 17 miles by stage to stay a weekend or a week, while we drove up and hiked in on an afternoon jaunt. Life moves faster now. Approaching the springs, we saw the hotel outbuildings where horses, hens, & cow were stabled and the garden planted. With town being a half day (I suppose) stagecoach trip away, a hotel manager in those days had to provide his own dairy and grocery service, I suppose.
Not far away, we saw the remains of a later structure (1910), Boyd's Sanitarium. Dr. Boyd, a physician turned engineer, built this facility for patients with tuberculosis, one of whom was his wife. It seems, however, that Dr. Boyd didn't take into account the fact that patients whose lungs are full of tuberculosis don't breathe so well at 6500 feet altitude (Las Cruces is 2000' lower), and the facility was eventually closed.

An agreeable afternoon having been spent surrounded by history, mountains, water, and the green desert, we back ambled to the visitor's center and thence home.