Carrizozo

History

Prior to 1899, the area was primarily a few ranches and a stagecoach crossing with limited permanent settlement. Lawrence Murphy, a merchant active in the Lincoln County War (1878), owned a major ranch in the area. The location of Carrizozo was selected as the site for a station on the El Paso and Northeastern Railway (EP&NE) main line in 1899. Carrizozo was chosen over the nearby booming mine town of White Oaks, resulting in large-scale migration from White Oaks to Carrizozo. The railroad brought businesses, growing population, and increased importance to the town of Carrizozo. As a result, a county referendum in 1909 moved the seat of Lincoln County from the town of Lincoln to Carrizozo. The result was a boom in which railroad access and political importance combined to lead to significant population growth in Carrizozo. The population reached around 2,000 by 1920. During the same time, journalist Quentin Reynolds visited the town and wrote a piece on it for Collier's. Later, he wrote in The Wounded Don't Cry that "I used to agree with Bugs that once you left New York, you were strictly on the horse and buggy circuit. But of late years I've had to modify that. Since then I've discovered New Orleans, San Francisco and a little place called Carrizozo, New Mexico, where I want to go when I die. I want to go there and gang around the drug store and sneak behind the prescription counter with Art Rolland and have a nip of what he calls Old Granddaddy then type out his prescriptions for him." Carrizozo is about east of the Trinity Site, where the first nuclear bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945. Residents reported tremors like an earthquake and, as the first major downwind settlement, the town received a significant part of the remnants of the mushroom cloud resulting…

Geography

Carrizozo is located at the northern end of the Tularosa Basin, which extends southward to the New Mexico–Texas border. The town itself is located in a flat area known prior to the founding of the town as the Corrizo flats, with typical Chihuahuan desert scrub and desert grasslands. To the west of the town is the Carrizozo Malpais, a lava flow that is about 1,500 years old and accessible through the Valley of Fires Recreation Area. To the northeast is Carrizo Mountain, a peak within the Sacramento Mountains, and to the southeast is the Sierra Blanca mountain range which rises to an elevation of . Carrizozo has an average annual temperature of and an average precipitation of . The heaviest precipitation is in the summer. The climate under the Köppen classification is Bsk (cold, semi-arid steppe).

Race & ethnicity

Most-observed species

• House Finch

  Haemorhous mexicanus (P.L.Statius Müller, 1776) · Aves
  246
• House Sparrow

  Passer domesticus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  215
• Common Raven

  Corvus corax Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  184
• Turkey Vulture

  Cathartes aura (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  166
• California hedgehog

  Echinocereus coccineus (Engelm.) Engelm. · Magnoliopsida
  155
• Rock Wren

  Salpinctes obsoletus (Say, 1822) · Aves
  154
• Rock Pigeon

  Columba livia J.F.Gmelin, 1789 · Aves
  149
• Black-throated Sparrow

  Amphispiza bilineata (Cassin, 1850) · Aves
  129

Largest nearby schools

• CARRIZOZO ELEMENTARY
  Elementary · CARRIZOZO · 72 students · 14.4:1 ratio
• CARRIZOZO HIGH
  High · CARRIZOZO · 53 students · 10.6:1 ratio
• CARRIZOZO MIDDLE
  Middle · CARRIZOZO · 32 students · 8:1 ratio

Most recent

• M 2.7 — 2026-02-17
  37 km ENE of San Antonio, New Mexico
• M 2.7 — 2025-05-06
  6 km W of Nogal, New Mexico
• M 2.8 — 2025-01-03
  50 km NW of Tularosa, New Mexico
• M 2.7 — 2024-02-09
  34 km N of Carrizozo, New Mexico
• M 3 — 2022-10-25
  2 km NNE of La Luz, New Mexico
• M 2.8 — 2020-07-13
  40 km E of Socorro, New Mexico