Cattlemen Trail Dispersed Camping

Imagine my disappointment when I arrived to find that the USFS had made this a parking area. Yes, you can still camp here but you'll be on a sloped gravel lot with boulders preventing you from parking on the field. Bummer. There are two or three sites for smaller rigs on the right side of the road after you enter from NM 90 and before you get to the 'loop' area of the road. You can no longer camp in the large area to the left of the road - there are "no camping" signs there now. Yes, I will still camp here every spring because it's also where the Continental Divide Trail crosses and I set up a trail magic station here for the through hikers. My understanding from the locals is that there are plans for pit toilets to be installed here 'soon'. It's hard to say if this will remain free or if it will go onto the forest service campground roster. At any rate, if you come here in the spring (Last part of April through mid-May) you'll see lot of through hikers. At this crossing, they are 150 - 165 miles into the 3100 mile hike. Do yourself a favor and pay attention to where the trail crosses the parking area if you would prefer not to have people walking through your camp daily. Just look for the trail signs. This area continues to have free range cattle and, new this year, two feral house cats. We didn't see any large predators in our two weeks and only heard coyotes once. Any rig will fit back here but you'll be very challenged to get level without lifting tires on one side.

I tried to stay here arriving late on a Saturday cautious but hopeful of prior reviews stating how spread out and empty it is. There’s also snow and some pretty cold temps tomorrow going into the week. On my arrival around 6pm however the place was packed by RVs, Vans, and Tent campers. There’s quite a bit of construction going on as well it looks as though they’re trying to make some improvements to the area adding piping but a large area of dirt appeared to be flattened out with three tractors being present. This may have taken out some of the sites due to the size and placement of the area. The sites I did see (about 8ish) seemed close but fairly private and my AT&T bounced between 1 and 2 bars LTE. I may try to come back in the future due to its proximity to the trailhead but the construction and close sites have me weary.

The wind did get strong at times and there is a sign that warns of bears in the area, didn't see any cows but seen their droppings all over, a few deep rutted spots in the road sites are pretty close together and the did have a few porta-potties .at the begining of the trail (but never used them so I can't say how clean they were) pretty active area used my phone as a hotspot and got about 3mbps. Road noise wasn't too bad but was noticable when quite. hikers would usually arrive just as or b4 sunrise.

We wanted to stay here and thought the place looked cool. It was nice to see trees! Unfortunately, while we could get AT&T internet, we could not make a phone call or send out a text, so we were unable to stay since we still have to be able to work. If you don't care about not being able to call, this would be a nice place to setup camp right on the continental divide though. Wish we could have made it work!

Stopped here on our way to Silver City (even with 31 ft class C with towing car on back). Easy access off highway, spot right off the entrance to the left over the cattle guard is great for large rigs To pull through and pretty flat although there are more stops up the road further and saw some other RVers up there in the morning, Lots of cattle and cattle droppings, but had a great experience for a quiet place to stay the night right along route.