Chile, Crosses, and the Organ Mountains RoadyGoat
Las Cruces sits in the Mesilla Valley beneath the Organ Mountains, a jagged granite skyline named for rock spires that stand up like pipe organs. This is chile country — the legendary Hatch green chile is grown about forty minutes up the road, and roasters perfume the whole valley every fall. Right next door is the old plaza town of Mesilla, where Billy the Kid was tried for murder in 1881 and sentenced to hang; the courtroom was a small adobe that today is a gift shop on the plaza's corner. He escaped before the noose, killing two deputies on the way out. The surrounding Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument protects nearly half a million acres of desert, canyon and rock. Between the chile, the crosses the city is named for, and the Old West ghosts of Mesilla, this is borderland New Mexico at its most flavorful.
