Las Cruces was previously inhabited by the Manso people, and the Mescalero Apache lived nearby. The area was colonized by Juan de Oñate in 1598, and he became its first governor. Las Cruces was founded in 1849 when the US Army laid out the new town after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had ceded the land to the United States in 1848.

Doña Ana was on the US side of the Rio Grande, and the nearby village of Mesilla was founded in 1848 by settlers from Doña Ana who wished to stay in Mexican territory. The Mesilla region was incorporated into the United States with the Gadsden Purchase.

Las Cruces is a city in Doña Ana County, the Southwest portion of New Mexico, United States. The population was 89,722 as of the 2007 census estimate making it the second largest city in the state. Las Cruces is the center of an agricultural region irrigated by the Rio Grande, which flows just west of the city and provides much needed irrigation to support the state's prized chile crop. There are many mountains; the Organ Mountains that are to the east of the city, the Las Cruces area is also in close proximity to the Doña Ana mountains, the Robledo mountains, and Picacho peak.

Las Cruces is in the Mesilla Valley, which has thousands of acres of farmland irrigated by the Rio Grande River. Sixty miles east is White Sands National Monument, an area of surrealistic beauty. Photos of White Sands are included on this website.

Origin of state's name: Named by the Spanish for lands north of the Rio Grande River

Capital City: Santa Fe
Song: O, Fair New Mexico
Motto: Crescit eundo - It grows as it goes

Poem: "A Nuevo Mexico" by Luis Tafoya

The yellow field and red symbol colors are the colors of Spain. First brought to New Mexico by Spanish explorers in 1540. On New Mexico's flag we see a red sun with rays stretching out from it. There are four groups of rays with four rays in each group. This is an ancient sun symbol of a Native American people called the Zia. The Zia believed that the giver of all good gave them gifts in groups of four. These gifts are:

* The four directions - north, east, south and west.
* The four seasons - spring, summer, fall and winter.
* The day - sunrise, noon, evening and night.
* Life itself - childhood, youth, middle years and old age. All of these are bound by a circle of life and love, without a beginning or end

The origin of the city's name is unknown. In Spanish "Las Cruces" means "the crosses". Crosses have a symbolic meaning for many people in the area. The three crosses has been a symbol of the Las Cruces area since before Mesilla's founding in 1848, and was recently challenged in court.

Lee Duquette and his friends, Jerry and Carole Gerig, who live in Las Cruces and were kind enough to act as travel guides for the two RV Gypsies. Jerry and Karen used to line dance together in Florida.

Below: The Las Cruces Water Tank; The Conquistadors are represented as one of the First travelers up the Rio Grande from Spain, but the Native Americans were already here.

Below: The beautiful Organ Mountains are located east of Las Cruces, New Mexico. They were named by Spanish explorers who felt that the jagged peaks looked like the pipes of a pipe organ.

Below: Plants and Cacti in Jerry Gerig's yard

Below: The Las Cruces' giant roadrunner sculpture celebrated its fifth anniversary along I-10. But the only "Beep! Beep!" the two RV Gypsies heard was from an occasional passing car.

Below: As shown below, the giant roadrunner is made with all kinds of stuff; tennis shoes, old computer keyboards, bicycle tires, broken hair dryers, plastic plates, paint brushes, and lots of trash. The body of the bird is composed of wire fencing and sturdy material found at the city's sanitary landfill, which was its original nesting area after its creation in 1992. Much like the plight of its flesh-and-feathers counterpart, however, the roadrunner's habitat, in fact its very life, was threatened by progress. The city closed the landfill area on the east mesa to allow housing to be developed. The big bird now sits off I-10 on the outskirts of Las Cruces.

The two RV Gypsies also visited Las Cruces NM in 2012 and 2015. If your visit either of these pages, there will be a link back here. Each visit was different. All each of the three years, link to the other two years at the bottom of the page.