Let the traveler be aware of several important facts when he passes through this region. First, this is empty country, an area that has fewer people now than it had eighty years ago. Its mines are mostly closed and the towns that grew with the mines are ghosts. One of the most famous of these is the town of Kelly, a short distance from the community of Magdalena. Another is Mogollon, off U.S. Highway 180 in the southwestern part of this region. Either of these will give to the viewer a vivid picture of the mining camps of the nineteenth century. To the average tourist crossing the San Agustin Plains, they seem desolate and uninteresting. To the traveler with imagination and knowledge of the history of this once great inland lake, the trip can be exciting. He pictures this great basin full of water, forty-five miles long and fifteen miles wide, and sees mountains covered with blue spruce surrounding the great lake. His mental motion picture rolls on thousands of years, watching the water evaporate and the forest of spruce die, to be replaced eventually by the piñon and juniper now dotting the hills. Grass grew in the old lake bed, except in the last areas to evaporate, for these had an alkali content too high for most grasses. The traveler then watches the Indian enter the scene—not the pueblo builder, except as a transient, for no water is available. The nomadic warrior uses the pathway later. In 1774 and in 1776, he sees several important battles between the Spanish and the Apaches fought on these Plains. Later, the American cattleman dominates them, as he does today.... And so the mosaic grows—Indians, Spanish, Americans, cattle, and mines—and the spectacular vistas and the vast emptiness add color and excitement for the traveler who sees the past with the present. Southeast New Mexico Much of southeast New Mexico is an extension of the Great Plains, but it has some rugged mountains and a severe desert in the middle of which lie White Sands National Monument and the White Sands Missile Range. Mountain ranges include the Sacramento east of Alamogordo and the Guadalupe Mountains, in which are located Carlsbad Caverns. The plains part of this region are devoted to cattle, potash, and oil. Like the other plains regions of New Mexico, the heritage passed on from the great cattle empires of bygone days is very strong and detectable in the people. Since the early 1930’s, oil has come to play an increasingly important part in the history of this section. This is especially true near Hobbs. [Illustration: (_Forest Service, U.S.D.A._) Anyone for a hike?... in the Guadalupe Mountains]