December 9, 1999

Cowboy town wants to be Aspen of Middle America

By PETE HERRERA
Associated Press Writer

RUIDOSO, N.M. -- Quarter horses remain the favorite sport of summer and cowboys still outnumber tourists at the rustic Win, Place and Show bar downtown.

But as the century heads for the finish line, Ruidoso is undergoing a transformation that its mayor predicts eventually will turn the resort town in the Sacramento Mountains into an Aspen for Middle America.

The signs of promise and progress are everywhere: from the $7 million renovation of Mechem Drive -- one of the two main roads leading into town -- to the Spencer Theater for the Performing Arts, an eight-story, 514-seat cultural oasis.

At Ruidoso Downs, the racetrack that is home to the world's richest quarter horse race and for the last half of this century supplied the town's economic lifeblood, gamblers now have another option. The Billy The Kid Casino opened in May and drew standing-room-only crowds all summer.

Ground was broken in October for a new resort hotel to open next summer with 115 rooms and a conference center. Also in the planning stages is a $7 million recreational center that will feature a 50-meter indoor pool, tennis courts and other sports facilities.

Throughout the Ruidoso Valley and its maze of pine tree-studded canyons and winding dirt roads, houses with price tags of up to $500,000 are going up. They are havens for retirees and working Americans who have discovered Ruidoso is more than just a nice place to visit.

"You have business people that are connecting themselves through modems to the world and being able to pick where they live," says Mayor Robert Donaldson. "We're getting people from all over the country, from Fortune 500 corporations, upper management that are buying property here."

The city, about 200 miles southeast of Albuquerque and 120 miles northeast of El Paso, Texas, is a tourist mecca. Curio shops and upscale art galleries share the same block and the food chain stretches from roasted corn and barbecued beef at roadside stands to French cuisine at the La Lorraine Restaurant in the heart of downtown.

In 1990, Ruidoso's population was 4,500. There are nearly 9,000 permanent residents now and the population swells to about 35,000 on summer weekends, Donaldson says.

They come for the cool mountain air, the ski trails on the neighboring Mescalero Apache reservation, and a place where they can golf virtually year-round, fish for rainbow trout and hunt for elk, deer and turkey.

At The Links at Sierra Blanca, a plush and picturesque golf course built on the site of the town's old airport, 25,000 to 30,000 rounds are played each year.

"New Mexico, in general, is being discovered and Ruidoso now, in deference to Santa Fe, is starting to attract people who want to see what we have here in the mountains," says Morgan Clough, the golf course's general manager.

In its early days, Ruidoso was the place where people came to get away from the summer's heat. They came from Roswell, El Paso and Las Cruces, and eventually built cabins and summer homes.

Dave Parks, a former teacher and insurance agent, was born in Ruidoso in 1933. Two years earlier, his mother, a Texas school teacher, had come for a vacation and stayed.

"In those days, there was very little electricity," Parks says. "The town had a small power plant that ran from 7 in the morning till 9 at night. At 9 the lights would blink a couple of times and everybody knew they had to get their kerosene lamps out."

The racetrack was built in 1948 and became an instant attraction to Texans who were cashing in on the oil boom that lasted into the early 1980s. They came to bet the horses in the summer and to ski in winter. And when the oil bust hit in 1985, Ruidoso's economy also took a blow.

But Ruidoso survived the tough times and is again thriving. With the growth comes the question of whether Ruidoso (the Spanish word for "noisy") can keep its quaintness, avoid becoming the next Aspen, Colo., or Park City, Utah.

Donaldson says it can.

"We're not going to get the jetsetters and billionaires," the mayor says. "Sure, we'll have a few of those, but this is going to be Middle America's Aspen."

Right now Ruidoso isn't in Aspen's neighborhood. In Aspen, which ranks as one of the richest towns in the nation, a median-priced home sells for $1.62 million. In Ruidoso, the median price for a three-bedroom, two-bath home is around $160,000.

In Aspen, the traffic from private jets got so bad during the July 4th holiday this year that the town's Sardy Field had to close down. In Ruidoso, the traffic jams are created by pickup trucks and SUVs.

"We have a lot of people of wealth that come here to fit in, not stand out," Donaldson says. "It's a place to get lost and just be a regular person."

The Who's Who in the Ruidoso Valley include Jacqueline Spencer, widow of the heir to a Wall Street fortune, and R.D. Hubbard, a horse racing magnate and owner of Ruidoso Downs.

Spencer, a horse owner who lives in nearby Nogal, donated the $20 million to build the theater north of town that features a large atrium lobby with 300 panes of glass and mica-flecked limestone, blown-glass sculptures.

"I wanted some place to go to see wonderful performances without having to put up with New York, or some other place where you can't breathe the air and there's just too many people," Ms. Spencer says.

Pop conductor Marvin Hamlisch, jazz great Dave Brubeck and the Russian national ballet are among those who have performed there since it opened two years ago.

The Spencer Theater isn't the only glamorous place in town. Most of the homes being built cost more than $200,000 and "there's a substantial amount of $300,000, $400,000 and $500,000 houses under construction," says Donaldson, a mortgage broker.

Prices like that make it difficult for many of the town's employees to find affordable housing.

"Service people, even if you're making $10 an hour, you're not going to do very well. And in a tourist town like ours, you have to have service people," says state Rep. W.C. "Dub" Williams, who has lived here since the mid '50s.

The town is looking into forming a partnership with private contractors to build more public housing.

"We're going to look for partnerships where we might be able to abate property taxes, some fees, in return for rent control and primary housing for people who work in Ruidoso or Ruidoso Downs," Donaldson says. "People are having a very difficult time filling some of their employee needs."

Ruidoso also wants to look at Taos' solution to a shortage of affordable housing in that northern New Mexico tourist town.

Taos is spending $2.5 million to finance a housing project on a 32-acre parcel of town land. The homes, with a price tag of just under $100,000, will be built on 124 lots.

"It took us four years to find a contractor that was willing to work with us and get the price down," says Taos Mayor Fred Peralta.

Some of the town's employees, such as racetrack groom Nacho Colen, don't even look for housing. Colen, a native of Mexico City, earned $350 a week and lived this summer in a small room in trainer James McArthur's barn.

"It's the only way they can make it," McArthur says. "Most of the other grooms don't get $350."

Colen, who says he can only earn about one-tenth of his weekly wage in Mexico, plans to return next summer. "It's expensive to live here, but the money is still a lot better than what I can make in Mexico," he says.

Like Colen, most in Ruidoso believe the town's future is good. They are willing to put up with the growing pains.

"If progress means new restaurants, wider roads and more traffic lights, then I think that's where we have to be," says Clough, of The Links, who came to town as a ski instructor 35 years ago and never left. "The quality of life is going to be dependent upon the quality of people who move to the community."

If You Go

• GETTING THERE: The nearest airports are in Albuquerque, about 200 miles northwest, and El Paso, about 120 miles southwest. From Albuquerque, take I-25 south 90 miles to San Antonio, head east 70 miles on U.S. 380 to Nogal, then south 30 miles on N.M. 37 to Ruidoso. From El Paso, take U.S. 54 north 100 miles to Tularosa, N.M., then U.S. 70 east 20 miles to Ruidoso.

• LODGING: The Village of Ruidoso has several hotels and motels, chains and locally owned, bed-and-breakfasts, and cabins and lodges. Rooms run from about $40 per night at the Economy Inn to $105 at the Inn of the Mountain Gods casino resort on the nearby Mescalero Apache Reservation.

• WEATHER: At nearly 7,000 feet above sea level, Ruidoso's average high temperature is 66 and the average low is 30. The town gets an average of 21.1 inches of precipitation a year. Every part of New Mexico gets no less than 70 percent sunshine year-round.

• ATTRACTIONS: Surrounded by mountains, canyons and the Lincoln National Forest, the Ruidoso Valley is full of outdoor attractions and activities, including skiing, fishing, birding, hiking and camping, golf and mountain bike and horseback riding.

  The Casino Apache, on the nearby Mescalero Apache Reservation, offers live poker, blackjack, craps and video slots and poker. The Ruidoso Downs has the world's richest quarter horse race and is home to the Billy The Kid Casino.

  From Thanksgiving to Easter, Ski Apache offers skiing on groomed powder slopes with the largest lift capacity in New Mexico.

  The White Sands National Monument, about a one-hour drive west of Ruidoso, is one of the most unusual places on earth. It is a vast landscape of brilliant white sand with huge dunes covering nearly 300 square miles.

  The Hubbard Museum of the American West includes collections of Anne C. Stradling and the Museum of the Horse.

• INFORMATION:Contact the Ruidoso Valley Chamber of Commerce, 720 Sudderth Drive, P.O. Box 698, Ruidoso, N. M. 88355. Phone (800) 253-2255 or (505) 257-7395. Fax: (505) 257-4693. Or visit the Web site.