Beyond the Lake: Sierra County Attractions Worth the Drive

Ghost towns in the Black Range, a hot spring at the edge of the Gila, museums, and mountain drives — the day trips that fill out a longer stay.

Most visitors come to Sierra County for the lake and the springs. Stay a few days longer and the rest of the county opens up — and it's more varied than the drive down I-25 suggests.

Head west from Truth or Consequences and the desert climbs into the Black Range. Hillsboro and Kingston are former mining towns that never quite disappeared, with a few hundred residents between them, an excellent small museum, a historic hotel, and some of the best mountain scenery in southern New Mexico. The drive itself, up NM-152 toward Emory Pass, is spectacular in fall.

Keep going and you reach the edge of the Gila National Forest — over three million acres of wilderness, hiking, and hot springs. It's a long day trip rather than a casual afternoon, but for anyone who likes real backcountry, it's the reason to add a day to the itinerary.

Closer to town, Geronimo Springs Museum covers regional history from Apache heritage through the town's radio-contest renaming, and the Veterans Memorial Park and museum downtown is a genuinely moving small collection. The Sierra County Fair each fall is worth planning around if your dates line up.

And then there's the drive itself. Between the river bosque, the desert basin, and the mountains to the west, you can cover three distinct landscapes in an afternoon without ever leaving the county. We'll happily sketch out a route based on how far you want to go and how early you want to start.