Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Candy Kitchen, NM

Candy Kitchen is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Cibola County, in northwestern New Mexico.

The 2020 census counted 107 residents in Candy Kitchen.

The community sits at an elevation of about 7,415 feet, roughly 60 miles south of Gallup, just south of New Mexico State Road 53, the byway known as the Ancient Way.

Candy Kitchen got its name during Prohibition, when a local rancher sold piñon nut candy over the counter as a front for buying the large amounts of sugar he needed for his moonshine operation; the liquor was sold under the counter.

The community grew out of Candy Kitchen Ranch, a spread of 18 sections of land interspersed with tribal, state, and Bureau of Land Management land that developers began subdividing in the 1970s.

Candy Kitchen lies near, but has never been part of, the Ramah Navajo Reservation, and it has no municipal government; the community is largely off-grid, with no sewer system and few homes connected to electric lines.

Candy Kitchen is home to the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary, founded in 1991 by artist Jacque Evans as the Candy Kitchen Wolf and Wolf-Dog Rescue Ranch; it became a nonprofit in 1993 and took its current name in 2003.

The sanctuary shelters more than 70 rescued wolves, wolfdogs, and other canids that cannot be released into the wild, making it one of the largest wolf sanctuaries in the United States and the community's best-known institution.

The Candy Kitchen Trading Post, which opened in 2011, stands in the center of the community.

Candy Kitchen has no post office of its own; mail is addressed through Ramah, ZIP code 87321.