Enchanted Circle

By the autumn of 2005, the white chapel on the hill above Angel Fire was already thirty-four years old, and thousands of visitors a year were finding their way up U.S. Highway 64 to sit in its quiet. Then, on Veterans Day 2005, the memorial entered a new chapter. The site became Vietnam Veterans Memorial State Park, New Mexico's thirty-third state park, and the only state park in the United States dedicated solely to Vietnam veterans.

The drive east from Angel Fire offers one of the finest geology lessons in northern New Mexico. Past Eagle Nest, U.S. Highway 64 follows the Cimarron River into Cimarron Canyon, where Cimarron Canyon State Park stretches from Eagle Nest Lake to Ute Park within the 33,116-acre Colin Neblett Wildlife Area. According to the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources, the canyon exposes nearly two billion years of geologic history, written in cliffs and road cuts that an observer can learn to read.

Taty at the Bump is a bistro-style cafe in the heart of Angel Fire, and its name is pronounced TAH-tee. The cafe describes itself with a cheerful promise of breakfast, lunch and plants, and that short phrase captures the spirit of the place well. It is a bright and welcoming stop where visitors can begin a mountain day with a proper coffee and a satisfying meal, and where locals can settle in with friends before heading out to the trails, the lake, or the slopes.

Wednesday, November 4, 2026

Angel Fire's tourism director brought a simple message to the Village tourism board on October 27: advertising works. In his report to the board, Craig told members that paid advertising directly drives the searches, referrals and bookings that fill lodging rooms and restaurant tables across the Moreno Valley, and he urged the Village to keep its marketing steady through the whole year rather than turning it on and off with the seasons.

Did you know that one of the Moreno Valley's first cattlemen reached New Mexico by crossing an ocean to avoid a war, and then promptly enlisted in another army? Patrick Lyons was born in February 1831 at Kilriney, in County Kildare, Ireland, and was educated in the national schools of his native land. In 1854 he was drafted into the English army for the war between England and Russia. To avoid that service he came to America instead, landing in New York, where, strange to say, he immediately enlisted in the First Regiment of Mounted Rifles.

Tuesday, November 3, 2026

Tuesdays are road day in the Moreno Valley, and this morning the home roads are the easy part of the story. Angel Fire woke up clear and cold, around 28 degrees with light northwest wind, no weather alerts in effect, and a sunny day ahead with a high near 50. Sunrise came at 6:26 AM and sunset is at 5:02 PM, so anyone crossing the valley early or late will be driving in the coldest, darkest part of the day.

Angel Fire is famous first for its ski slopes, but the family that created the resort never planned a winter-only place. When Roy and George LeBus of Wichita Falls, Texas, bought the 9,000-acre Monte Verde Ranch in 1954, and added the 14,000-acre Cieneguilla Ranch from the Maxwell Land Grant Company in 1956, they were running cattle in the Moreno Valley. Within a decade, as the cattle business declined, Roy was imagining something else on that ranchland: a year-round resort with a ski area, a country club, and a golf course.

Early November is a quieter, gentler time to watch elk in the Moreno Valley. The bugling that echoed across the meadows around Angel Fire in late September and early October has faded, the rut is over, and herds are settling into the serious business of feeding and regaining strength before winter. On a still morning, you may find cows, calves, and young elk grazing in open meadows near the forest edge, heads down in the dry grasses, lifting now and then to scan the valley.

Monday, November 2, 2026

Drive west from Angel Fire through Cimarron Canyon and you come to Cimarron, the old Santa Fe Trail town at the edge of the Moreno Valley. In the 1870s it was the center of Colfax County ranching and, for a time, home to one of the West's most talked-about cattlemen, Robert Clay Allison. He built a real ranch here, but it is his temper and his gun that people still remember.