Outings: Deming
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Rock Steady
Experience the exception to the rule. Although collecting pieces of the natural landscape is often discouraged, sun-bleached, stone-strewn Rockhound State Park, southeast of Deming off N.M. 143/497, is believed to be the only protected landscape in the United States where you can drive off with chunks of the environment—legally. Each visitor may haul off as many as 15 pounds of jasper, perlite, onyx, rhyolite, quartz crystals, and other colorful rocks scattered over 240 sloping, slippery acres. Particularly popular are so-called thunder eggs: clumps of nondescript spherulite that hide lovely swirls of agate and opal inside.
While rock hounds (collectors) scour the park for hidden gems, their kids can have great fun competing to discover the ugliest, prettiest, or strangest specimen.
Many rock aficionados swing by in early March while attending the annual Rockhound Roundup, held at the Southwestern New Mexico State Fairgrounds in nearby Deming—but at this park there’s more to see than rocks. Amenities include a campground, botanical garden, visitor center, gift shop, hiking trails, and picnic areas. Though hot and windy in summer, from late fall through winter the Park’s climate is mild and calm. Wildlife here includes coyotes, rock squirrels, mule deer, roadrunners, ringtailed cats, jackrabbits, and quail. And despite its Chihuahuan Desert location, which annually boasts 362 days of sunshine, these grounds are far from barren—they’re alive with yucca, prickly pear, barrel cactus, sotol, creosote, mesquite, juniper, beargrass, and Mormon tea.
Rockhound State Park is tucked into the foothills of the Little Florida Mountains, part of a series of volcanic crags that tower above a broad plain bisected by I-10. Two miles south, in the big Florida Mountains, is the park’s Spring Canyon area (open Wednesday–Sunday, 8 a.m.–4 p.m.), a rare desert oasis backed against steep cliffs. Lucky visitors may spy a herd of goat-like Persian ibex, descendants of animals imported in the 1970s to benefit game hunters.
$5 per vehicle. (575) 546 6182; www.emnrd.state.nm.us/PRD/Rockhound.htm—Richard Mahler
