Percha Dam State Park Campground

Stayed here while visiting this part of New Mexico. It's not a fancy stop over place, but very affordable even for our of state residence. My price was for state resident with annual parks pass. Facilities were clean but dated, as with all of New Mexico parks unfortunately. The Rio Grande runs through the side of the park! Lots of big cottonwood trees make it an oasis in this part of the state. Very quiet little park.

I’ll say that in early November, with mountains, meadows and golden cottonwoods along the Rio Grande, flocks of sand hill cranes overhead in the morning… this is a pretty campground. Great value for PHU, shade, solar showers, spacious sites.
The BIG DRAWBACK is that no one told us (nor is there accurate signage) indicating that the nearest dump site is 4 miles away at Caballo Lake State Park, a sister park to Percha Dam. Come on, New Mexico😠.
There were also goat-head stickers all over the ground which was problem enough for us adults, but would be very painful for pets and children. These 2 reasons have caused me to bump down the rating for an otherwise lovely park.

The current (8/23) camp host screamed obscenities at me and told me to leave the park "for BLM land" because I asked the neighboring campsite (where he was partying) to please tone it down after 10 pm, during quiet hours. Yep, he's still here, park staff want volunteers with this attitude so that you won't criticize anything. Rangers don't care, if not worse- I've had property destroyed in addition to hostility from this host. Rangers drive around in pickups with blacked-out windows like wannabe feds, and don't stop if you try to wave them down. The host attempts to look macho riding around on a lawnmower every day- it's about all he does- but he doesn't use the restrooms so he doesn't care what condition they're in, if showers don't work, lights are burnt out, toilet paper dispensers are empty, etc. He'll tell you that he's only an unpaid volunteer and it's not his job. Paid maintenance "clean" restrooms/outhouses with a filthy bucket of slop and a toilet brush that they use on every toilet seat- it's just as well they drive away and don't "clean" at all if you are in the outhouse (I've been here 6 days and the women's side has not been cleaned once.) You can see their priorities when they spend days with weed wackers somewhere, but nobody ever trims the junipers that are growing over the crumbling sidewalks to the outhouse, or around the water spigots in the same area. This demonstrates the difference between looking busy/macho and actually caring about the public. "You don't matter and we don't care" is the motto here, especially if you ask for anything unreasonable, like observing quiet hours or refilling toilet paper... Goathead thorns are everywhere, watch your dog's paws. The raccoons are amusing if they're not getting into your stuff. The river, when it exists is brown and gross, but locals and Texans come out in big noisy crowds weekends to swim and fish in this junk. Ironically, I bet they're the same ones who deride the goals of the CWA... The positive is weekday birding, if you can deal with some truly stupid and hateful people. Just this summer I've seen 1 painted bunting, summer tanagers, Bullocks orioles, sandhill cranes- even a couple of vermillion flycatchers that live near the host's site, which I bet he's never noticed. In the fall there's no hunting in this park, so it's a refuge for many types of ducks, and a small herd of deer sleep in the grassy sites along the river. In spite of being close to the highway and seasonal agricultural activities, this could be a nice park if anyone cared, but that won't happen because it's rural southern NM. A weird mix of apathy and hostility is the prevailing attitude here.

We stayed at site #3 for 8 days to save money before moving on to Arizona. The bathrooms are clean and the kids playground was decent but the goat head thorns pretty much ruined it. Our little ones would get them stuck to their shoes and clothes and scream bloody murder when they’d get poked or step on one. Not much to do or see in the area but not bad at all. I wish we would have booked site #1 which was a full hookup (and the only one I saw at the campsite) so it was a pain to keep having to go to the dump site at Caballo Lake State Park to dump.

This is a very nice New Mexico park. It is pretty small, by but considering it is part of Caballo Lake State Park, this is more like another campground within that park. The goat head thorns are everywhere, so watch your dog's paws. The bathrroms are very clean and well taken care of. Verizon and AT&T work well here, but AT&T is super fast for streaming and work, 123 down/6 up.