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Many thanks to all of you with such thoughtful replies. Lots of disagreement. I must admit to being very aprehensive when I pushed the send buttom on my original post. However, to my surprise, I did receive a few unexpected rep pts. Who would have thunk it?
Again, I want to apologize to any I may have offended. That was not my intent. What you got was a personal travel log similar to a diary. Perhaps it was best left unposted?
Jim, I doubt any offense was taken. What one likes in any given area is VERY subjective, and everybody has different needs and wants. You know the old saying---"One man's meat is another man's poison," etc.
Even after all of my research (a minimum of 2 years, probably closer to 3) and driving all over the state, I still didn't get all of my coons up one tree. I don't think it's possible.
You'll eventually find something.
For myself, it's probably going to take two places, with my main residence remaining in Alamogordo for the time being.
James, no offense taken I just don't think you understood the town. We have a great Country Market and hardware that can match Walmart prices. So a drive to Ruidoso is not necessary once a week. Most of our visiting occurs in the market, post office or just a friendly handshake over the fence. There is a back road thru Ft Stanton called airport road that bypasses Bonita Hill. There is no wrong side of Capitan. I do hope you come back and let us know, maybe a few of us could meet at Smokey cafe and give you a better feeling for our little town.
There is a back road thru Ft Stanton called airport road that bypasses Bonita Hill.
Bonita Hill? Is that the same as Angus Hill? As for NM-220 through Ft. Stanton, I don't think the county plows that as soon as they do NM-48. In any event, people that live in the region full time know how to cope with the few lasting storms we have each winter - chains, studded tires, 4WD and AWD being options when it's actually necessary to drive on ice or snow packed roads. Me? I just wait until after 10am when the pavement is free of frozen stuff.
I'll have to agree with most posters on here that Alamo is a very poor city, which is why we moved back home to Colorado after about 3 years.
My family and I picked Alamogordo mainly due to having affordable housing and great weather (nice contrast from the cold winters of CO, and allowed the misses to stay home with the kids).
I couldn't help but to laugh at the post about Roswell, my family and I checked out Roswell and Carlsbad before deciding on Alamo (for having the mountains in your back yard).
It seemed every other house in Roswell was a crack-house in need of demolition! Scary!
Carlsbad was decent with the Pecos River flowing through allowing boating, swimming and lots of green parks and trails along the water-way. That is one thing Alamo is seriously lacking, water! You'd think you were in the middle of a desert or something. He He.
Having the mountains a half hour away sold us on Alamo over Carlsbad. We found ourselves escaping the heat quite often in the summer. But the biggest problems we didn't even consider before moving, was that the schools are horrible, and the pay at the local jobs is pathetic.
I worked at Walgreen's in town for a year and a half and couldn't break $8.50. The misses also applied for a bank job, having years of bank management experience behind her, but was only offered $10 an hour from two different banks. I don't see how families are able to survive. You almost have to be in the military to afford to live down there.
Now, I understand most folks looking into Alamo are of retirement age, but I just wanted to warn young families just starting out to stay clear of this town, or move away if you grew up here (and pretty much any town within an hour or so of the Mexican border. Crime and violence are on the rise in these border towns). You are almost guaranteed to do better somewhere else.
If anyone has any questions about Alamo, I will be glad to answer as best I can. Like I said, I did give Alamo a try, but it just wasn't the best fit for my family (we got spoiled with Colorado paying decent wages and having great schools for my three kids). But hey, besides that....
What parts of Alamogordo did you drive through? I'm from Pennsylvania and love it here. I lived in South Dakota for 6 years so I'm used to things being more spread out and rural compared to the more urban lifestyle I grew up in in PA.
What part of PA are you from? I live in the Wilkes-Barre area. I'm looking to move to NM in 2012 (health considerations) and I'm still not settled on a location. I've been considering several locations including LC and Alamo. My criteria include public housing as I'm on Social Security retirement of less than $900 per month and I could not afford to live in private housing. It appears that Alamo has a well organized public housing authority. I live in a rent subsidized public housing unit at the present time, so I have 6 years of history with a PHA. LC appears to have a severe shortage of public housing, judging by several hours of Google searches and web browsing.
I agree with the OP but every place has poverty and bad areas. I've been going to Ruidoso for over a year now from El Paso. I love the landscape of Capitan and the weather year round. And Ruidoso has alot of bad looking areas. There's more trailers in this city than I've ever seen. Once past Alamogordo the poverty doesn't seem to end until you get into downtown Ruidoso. All the small cities on 54 seem to have a ton of poverty. But that's to be expected since the work around these parts is limited.
With that said in a few years I plan on getting a cheap vacation home in either Capitan, Ruidoso or Cloudcroft. Can't beat the weather, landscape and cost of home prices with cheap property taxes.
I'll have to agree with most posters on here that Alamo is a very poor city, which is why we moved back home to Colorado after about 3 years.
My family and I picked Alamogordo mainly due to having affordable housing and great weather (nice contrast from the cold winters of CO, and allowed the misses to stay home with the kids).
I couldn't help but to laugh at the post about Roswell, my family and I checked out Roswell and Carlsbad before deciding on Alamo (for having the mountains in your back yard).
It seemed every other house in Roswell was a crack-house in need of demolition! Scary!
Carlsbad was decent with the Pecos River flowing through allowing boating, swimming and lots of green parks and trails along the water-way. That is one thing Alamo is seriously lacking, water! You'd think you were in the middle of a desert or something. He He.
Having the mountains a half hour away sold us on Alamo over Carlsbad. We found ourselves escaping the heat quite often in the summer. But the biggest problems we didn't even consider before moving, was that the schools are horrible, and the pay at the local jobs is pathetic.
I worked at Walgreen's in town for a year and a half and couldn't break $8.50. The misses also applied for a bank job, having years of bank management experience behind her, but was only offered $10 an hour from two different banks. I don't see how families are able to survive. You almost have to be in the military to afford to live down there.
Now, I understand most folks looking into Alamo are of retirement age, but I just wanted to warn young families just starting out to stay clear of this town, or move away if you grew up here (and pretty much any town within an hour or so of the Mexican border. Crime and violence are on the rise in these border towns). You are almost guaranteed to do better somewhere else.
If anyone has any questions about Alamo, I will be glad to answer as best I can. Like I said, I did give Alamo a try, but it just wasn't the best fit for my family (we got spoiled with Colorado paying decent wages and having great schools for my three kids). But hey, besides that....
LOL, El Paso is right next to the most dangerous city in North America and it's crime rate per capita is top 3 in the country for LOWEST crime.
What part of PA are you from? I live in the Wilkes-Barre area. I'm looking to move to NM in 2012 (health considerations) and I'm still not settled on a location. I've been considering several locations including LC and Alamo. My criteria include public housing as I'm on Social Security retirement of less than $900 per month and I could not afford to live in private housing. It appears that Alamo has a well organized public housing authority. I live in a rent subsidized public housing unit at the present time, so I have 6 years of history with a PHA. LC appears to have a severe shortage of public housing, judging by several hours of Google searches and web browsing.
I grew up in Watsontown, but moved to Mechanicsburg(Harrisburg area) when I was in High School. One of my brothers is living in Scranton. There is a PHA development a little down and across the street from the appartments my house is behind.
On the crime subject...The crime in Alamogordo is not bad at all. I love how people assume that border towns must have high crime. Outside of the double homicide that just occurred(drug related) most of the crime I see is very minor and not a lot of violent crimes. Now I've only been living here since December(and will be living here for what I hope is a long time), but that's the impression I get from the short time I've lived here.
On the crime subject...The crime in Alamogordo is not bad at all.
You're right. I've been here almost 3 years (this coming August), and most of the crime is either drug-related, domestic violence or petty vandalism.
Compared to other places--not so bad. But the drug problem (especially meth) is just as bad as any other place.
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