Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Carrizozo, NM

Carrizozo is an incorporated town in central New Mexico and the county seat of Lincoln County, and its nickname is "'Zozo".

Before 1899 the site held a few ranches and a stagecoach crossing; that year the El Paso and Northeastern Railway chose it for a station, the town was founded, and the new railroad town drew people and businesses away from the booming mining town of White Oaks.

The name Carrizozo comes from carrizo, the Spanish vernacular name for the reed grass that grew abundantly around the townsite and made excellent cattle feed, with an extra zo added to signal its abundance.

A 1909 referendum moved the Lincoln County seat from Lincoln to Carrizozo, and after four years of legal battles the United States Supreme Court resolved the fight in Carrizozo's favor in the case of Gray v. Taylor.

The 2020 census counted 972 residents in Carrizozo, little changed from 996 in 2010 and 1,036 in 2000.

Carrizozo sits at the junction of U.S. Routes 54 and 380, is served by Union Pacific freight trains, and has a general aviation airport, Carrizozo Municipal Airport.

The town lies about 35 miles east of the Trinity Site, where the first atomic bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945; residents felt the blast like an earthquake, and as the first sizable community downwind, Carrizozo received a significant share of the fallout.

Carrizozo stands at the northern end of the Tularosa Basin, and to its west lies the Carrizozo Malpais, a lava flow about 40 miles long and roughly 1,500 years old, visited at the Bureau of Land Management's Valley of Fires Recreation Area.

Carrizo Mountain rises to 9,600 feet northeast of town, and the Sierra Blanca range, reaching 11,981 feet, lies to the southeast.

The Carrizozo Women's Club, a Pueblo Revival building from 1920, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the Carrizozo Heritage Museum occupies a 1940s frozen-food locker plant converted to a museum in 2003.