Alto, New Mexico An Overview and History of the Area

Alto is located in the wondrous mountains called the Sacramentos. The Sacramentos can be visually translated to "a place of mysterious and sacred significance"...these mountains hold more history than could ever be read within one's lifetime...

Alto was well-established as a settlement before 1900...farms and ranches speckled its canyons reinforcing the need for its very own post office. The original Alto post office was appropriately located in a small log cabin off of the larger of the pathways. And, of course, the post office centralized Alto's community providing a venue for what was happening with the locals and the outside world. The best I can establish from my current research is that the Alto post office was first established in 1901 and was first settled in 1882...

Alto is located only 5 miles northwest of Ruidoso...and has consistently grown in population over the years since the first log cabin post office was established. Lincoln County, where Alto resides, was established in 1869...

Population of Alto today is approximately 1213 as of 2003...
Elevation is 7,300 feet...

The name Alto was chosen by the Postmaster W. H. Walker and is Spanish for "high"...and yes, there is a certain Rocky Mountain high that is inescapable...it's more than its overwhelming visual impact, there's a aura of reverence that's unmistakably unique to Alto...

Some of the more reknown residents of Alto include Eugene Manlove Rhodes...one of the foremost western writers of the 20th Century...taught here in Alto in 1891 and 1892. During its earlier years, before the Walker christening, Alto was known as Eagle Creek...and to this day, there is still a nearby area addressed as "Eagle Creek".

Alto also encompasses the high ridge of Alto Village...an elite neighborhood riding high in the clouds and reflecting the beauty of its surroundings...Wildlife can safely roam the Alto Ridge since the discharging of firearms is not allowed...in fact, because of it's well-kept golf course, the Ridge appears to be a beatifully landscaped wildlife park...

Today, Alto, and its surroundings, offers many sights, sounds and play to the New Mexico traveler...

An excerpt from:________________Ruidoso Country—Alto to Hondo
Sometime in the early 1880's several families that had earlier made camp on Bonito Creek began investigating places in the Lincoln County highlands. One of the families that settled on public land about ten miles southwest of Fort Stanton was the Brazels. They filed for a quarter section along Eagle Creek in what is now Alto. The Brazels and the other settlers were quite interested in education for their youngsters and so they built a schoolhouse. Their greatest difficulty was in finding someone qualified to teach and also tough enough to control some very big and rough kids. Several teachers had taken on the task only to discover themselves being thrown through the schoolhouse window.

In 1890, the new teacher was a young man who had only recently been a pupil at the same Eagle Creek school. Not only was his youth an apparent handicap, but, he also suffered a speech impediment. Besides, he weighed barely 150 pounds and looked like easy pickings for some of the students who were not only bigger, but older. This teacher never gave his new charges a chance. On the first day of school he startled the class when he pulled his pistol from his trousers and rapped for order. He got order. The young teacher was Eugene Manlove Rhodes who would later author Paso PorAqui and become recognized as the "Poet Laureate of the Cattle Kingdom." One of the young students who came to silence with the rapping of the gun butt was Jesse Wayne Brazel. Jesse, too, would gain a measure of notoriety. It was Jesse who confessed to having shot and killed Pat Garrett at a place just east of Las Cruces in February 1908.

by Herb Seckler Published 1987 Ruidoso Countryside...The Early Days

To learn more about Eugene Manlove Rhodes, click here.