The Mescalero Apache Reservation
Near Ruidoso, New Mexico
Just southwest of Ruidoso, wrapped around the flanks of Sierra Blanca, lies the homeland of the Mescalero Apache. For centuries before there was a town or a state line, these were nomadic people, hunters and gatherers who ranged across a vast stretch of the Southwest, following game and the seasons and the ripening of the mescal plant that gave them their name. The reservation was first set aside on May twenty-seventh, eighteen seventy-three, by an executive order of President Ulysses Grant, and originally sat near Fort Stanton.
The boundaries of the present reservation were fixed ten years later, in eighteen eighty-three. In the difficult years that followed, the Mescalero opened their land to other Apache people who had lost their own, including Mimbreno and Chiricahua families, and some Lipan Apache as well, so that today's tribe carries several histories woven together. This is not a museum or a memory.
It is a working, self-governing nation, and it owns and runs the two things that put Ruidoso on the map for so many travelers, the Ski Apache resort high on the mountain and the Inn of the Mountain Gods down in the valley. When you drive this country, you are a guest on Mescalero land.
