White Sands from Dog Canyon Trail, New Mexico
We stayed in Oliver Lee memorial state park again today and hiked the Dog Canyon trail which starts behind the visitor center in the park. The total trail is about 9 km long, and rises over 900 metres, but we didn’t go the whole way. We hiked in to the remains of an old cabin about 4.8 km in and 470 m elevation gain. The cabin is the stone walls of a small cabin, a “line” cabin, used when this area was still part of the Oliver Lee cattle ranch, and so-named because it was used at the end of the fence line in the canyon.
The part of the trail we did has a couple of very steep sections, one right near the start being especially steep and climbing up over some very bare and rough rock. As it was perfectly dry the trail was ok, but it would be no fun coming down the bare rock if it was wet. There are also a lot of rock steps in the trail. I thought it would be tougher on the knees coming down than it was, so perhaps the stairs helped some.
After we got back we stopped in at the visitor center, where we got the explanation of the history behind the line cabin. They have a number of displays of artifacts in a small museum. One tells about “Frenchy” who had a very small cabin near the visitor’s center (I walked to it later). They did an archaeological dig near his cabin, and had a number of artifacts in the center. They also had a diorama display of a battle between the US Cavalry and the Apaches. Several battles took place in this canyon.
Another display was about Oliver Lee for whom the park is named. He was an interesting character, who had a ranch here, and used the water that came from the small stream. I walked along the trail they have near this stream and saw where he built a concrete sluice as part of the waterworks. He also was tried (and acquitted) of murder, and had a shootout with Pat Garrett (the lawman who shot Billy the Kid). We had stopped along the highway from Las Cruces when we came here two days ago at an historical sign talking about the dissapearance of “Colonel Fountain and his 8-year-old son Henry”. It turns out the son’s murder is what Lee was charged with. Eventually Lee was elected to the state senate. We really are in the wild west here!