Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Red River, NM

Red River is an incorporated resort town in Taos County, in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of northern New Mexico.

The town is named for the Red River, a perennial stream that flows through it from the northern slopes of Wheeler Peak.

Before Anglo settlement, the Red River valley was used as a summer hunting ground by the Jicarilla Apache and Ute peoples, who hunted bighorn sheep, deer, and elk there.

Red River began in the late 1800s when miners from nearby Elizabethtown were drawn in by gold strikes, and by 1895 it was a booming mining camp of roughly 3,000 people producing gold, silver, and copper.

Mining peaked in 1897 and faded by 1905, with the last serious mining efforts ending in 1931; by then tourism had become the town's principal livelihood.

The town covers just 1.02 square miles and is completely surrounded by the Carson National Forest.

Red River sits at an elevation of 8,688 feet and averages about 157 inches of snow a year, one of the heaviest snowfall totals in New Mexico.

The 2020 census counted 542 residents in Red River, up 13.6 percent from 477 in 2010.

In the 2000 census, Red River had 234 households but 880 housing units, a reflection of its large stock of vacation and seasonal homes.

The Red River Ski & Summer Area opened in December 1959, founded by Oklahoma businessman Stokes E. Bolton, who built its first lift towers from surplus oil-field steel.