Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Reserve, NM

Reserve is an incorporated village in Catron County, New Mexico, and it is the county seat of Catron County.

The 2020 census counted 293 residents in Reserve, up slightly from 289 in 2010.

Catron County, created in 1921 and named for Santa Fe attorney and political leader Thomas B. Catron, is the largest county in New Mexico by land area but its third-least populous, with 3,579 residents at the 2020 census.

The village took its name from the national forests — in those days called forest reserves — that surround it, and it stands on the San Francisco River within the Gila National Forest region.

Reserve grew out of the San Francisco Plaza settlements founded by Mexican-American families along the river in the 1860s; Anglo settlers later renamed Upper Frisco Plaza as Milligan's Plaza.

Reserve was the site of the famous Frisco Shootout, in which deputy Elfego Baca held off a gang of Texas cowboys who wanted to kill him for arresting cowboy Charles McCarty; a monument in the village honors Baca.

New Mexico State Road 12 passes through Reserve, leading west to U.S. Route 180 and northeast to U.S. Route 60 at Datil, while NM 435 runs south through the San Francisco Plaza communities.

At an elevation of about 5,860 feet, Reserve has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate that is unusual in New Mexico, yet a freeze has been recorded there in every month of the year except August.

In the 2000 census, Reserve had 387 residents in 177 households, with 238 housing units in the village.

With two grocery stores, a hardware store, a bar, fairgrounds, and a health clinic, Reserve is the commercial center of a vast ranching and forest region.