Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Near West Cloudcroft Cloudcroft, NM

Cloudcroft is an incorporated village in Otero County, set inside the Lincoln National Forest in the Sacramento Mountains.

At 8,676 feet, Cloudcroft is one of the highest villages in the United States, and its cool, forested summers draw visitors up from the surrounding desert, making tourism the village's primary economy.

The 2020 census counted 750 people, 348 households, and 228 families in Cloudcroft.

Cloudcroft's origins date to 1899, when the El Paso and Northeastern Railroad of the Eddy brothers opened The Pavilion resort at the summit of its new logging line into the Sacramento Mountains; the rail line reached the village in early 1900 and its depot was finished that June.

The name Cloudcroft was suggested by the railroad's 1898 survey crew and means 'a pasture for the clouds.'

The Lodge, the village's upscale resort hotel, burned in 1909 and was rebuilt in 1911 at its present site; in the 1930s it was managed by hotelier Conrad Hilton.

Passenger trains stopped running to Cloudcroft in 1938 and the last freight train ran in 1947, but the wooden Mexican Canyon Trestle near the village survives from the old rail line.

Cloudcroft has a humid continental climate unusual for the Southwest and has been described as the southernmost place in North America with a continental climate subtype; it averages about 67 inches of snow a year.

U.S. Route 82 climbs from Alamogordo through the Sacramento Mountains to Cloudcroft and is the main highway serving the village.

The village is the headquarters of Cloudcroft Municipal Schools, which also serves other nearby mountain communities.