- Back to Gallery Index-

New Mexico Towns

Though New Mexico has always had a comparatively small population, more than 1,700 named towns have been established within the state during its history. A surprising number of these are now ghost towns or have entirely vanished from the face of the earth, but almost every one of them, from the early twentieth century onward, had registered motor vehicles. Illustrated immediately below are postmarks from roughly two hundred of these towns, both surviving ones and others long since disappeared. Following the postmarks will be found a tabular list of essentially every town that has existed in the state at one time or another. Some of these experienced changes in name or spelling over the years—several of them more than once—and these variations are included in the list. On occasion there have been two or more different towns which have used the same name, some even at the same time. In these instances the respective county names are shown in parentheses. Most of the towns listed here either have, or at one time had post offices, though in some cases for only a few months or years. For those who might be interested in knowing more about these settlements, both of the following publications provide, in a very concise format, essential information about the towns we list here. Julyan’s book is the more comprehensive of the two, but Pearce includes some towns not mentioned by Julyan, a couple of examples being the tiny and now long-abandoned railroad towns of Turquoise and Elwood, both on the old Southern Pacific (now Union Pacific) line between Alamogordo and the Texas state line to the south. New Mexico Place Names, T.M. Pearce, University of New Mexico Press, 1965, ISBN 0-8263-0082-0. Place Names of New Mexico, Revised Edition, The, Robert Julyan, University of New Mexico Press, 1998, ISBN 0-8263-1689-9. Click Here to go to the beginning of the tabular list.

Tabular List of New Mexico’s Towns Listed here are all towns known to us to have existed within the state from the 1800s to present. As noted earlier, a significant number are now ghost towns, or have disappeared altogether, but their names live on in New Mexico’s old motor vehicle records. If you know of any we have missed, or if you see any misspellings, please Contact us.  Scroll down or use the navigation links below to browse sections of the list that are of interest.

A   B   C   D   E   F   G   H   I   J   K   L   M   N   O   P   Q   R   S   T   U   V   W   X   Y   Z

-Back to Gallery Index-