Cloudcroft Highway (US Route 82)

[Max Rockatansky]

Cloudcroft is a village which is located in the Sacramento Mountains of Otero County, New Mexico at an elevation of 8,676 feet above sea level.  Cloudcroft was served by the Alamogordo & Sacramento Railway (better known as the Cloud-Climbing Railroad) which operated from 1899-1947.  Since the construction of the Alamogordo & Sacramento Railway the community of Cloudcroft has also been served by the Cloudcroft Highway.  The Cloudcroft Highway was part of the original alignment of New Mexico State Route 24 and was reassigned to New Mexico State Route 83 by 1928.  Following the shuttering of the Alamogordo & Sacramento Railway in 1947 the Cloudcroft Highway would be upgraded facilitate modern traffic.  The only highway tunnel in New Mexico was constructed along the new alignment of the Cloudcroft Highway during 1949 and the corridor would become part of US Route 82 during 1963.  The Cloudcroft Highway includes a 4,315 elevation gain over the course of the sixteen miles from near Alamogordo east to Cloudcroft.  This blog explores the history of the Cloudcroft Highway corridor from inception to modern times.

https://www.gribblenation.org/2023/10/us-route-82-and-cloudcroft-highway.html

[Bobby5280]

Nice article.

I have some fun childhood memories of driving through (and stopping at) Cloudcroft and other spots along US-82 such as Mayhill. My dad was stationed in Yuma; so we would drive from there to visit family in New Mexico and farther along in Texas and Oklahoma when he would go on leave. On the way back to Arizona we would often stop in Cloudcroft and buy a couple of gallon jugs of apple cider from a store there.

When I was a kid I was excited about driving through the tunnel on US-82 since it seemed so unusual. Going Westbound through the tunnel toward Alamogordo the view was pretty spectacular. There were mountains on both sides of the highway, a steep drop-off below and White Sands spread across the horizon in the distance.

[triplemultiplex]

Even after a month in New Mexico going up and down in elevation and getting used to that kind of pressure change, that drop out of Cloudcroft still made my ears hurt for a bit.