Bonito Hollow RV Park & Campground

Bonito Hollow RV Park and Campground in Alto, New Mexico, is a peaceful 12-acre retreat in the heart of the Lincoln National Forest — a camping destination in Lincoln County surrounded by the stories of Smokey Bear and Billy the Kid in the Sacramento Mountains, where the Ruidoso resort community, the Mescalero Apache Reservation, and the Sierra Blanca Peak's high-elevation ski and summer recreation give guests the most diverse outdoor recreation and historic heritage access in southeastern New Mexico. Alto's Lincoln County position on US-70/Alto Road above the Ruidoso valley gives the campground the specific mountain village character of a high-elevation Lincoln National Forest property at 6,900 feet in the Sierra Blanca range, where the ponderosa pine forest, the mountain climate's cool summers, and the surrounding national forest give the Bonito Hollow campground the natural setting that the New Mexico lowland desert cannot replicate. Twelve wooded acres of Lincoln National Forest-adjacent campground with full-hookup RV sites and tent camping give Bonito Hollow the mountain forest retreat character of a campground whose immediate forest setting and the national forest land surrounding it give guests the ponderosa pine camping environment of the Sacramento Mountains' high elevation within the Lincoln County resort corridor that the Ruidoso ski and summer recreation market sustains. The campground's name reflects the Bonito Creek drainage's specific Lincoln County geography — a tributary of the Rio Hondo that drains the Sierra Blanca range's eastern slope. Pets are welcome. Smokey Bear Historical Park in Capitan, 25 miles northeast of Alto in Lincoln County, preserves the story of the real Smokey Bear — the orphaned American black bear cub rescued from a 1950 Lincoln National Forest fire that became the living symbol of the US Forest Service's wildfire prevention campaign whose "Only You Can Prevent Wildfires" message has sustained the longest-running public service advertising campaign in American history. The park's memorial grove and the Smokey Bear's grave site give the Capitan museum the specific Lincoln County connection between the national symbol and the Sacramento Mountains forest that produced him. Lincoln Historic Site, 35 miles east of Alto in Lincoln County on US-380, preserves the most intact Victorian frontier town in New Mexico — the site of the Lincoln County War (1878), the Billy the Kid's famous courthouse escape of 1881, and the Pat Garrett-Billy the Kid lawman-outlaw relationship that produced the most enduring legend in New Mexico territorial history. The preserved Lincoln townsite's Tunstall Store, the Old Lincoln County Courthouse Museum, and the historic McSween House site give Lincoln the specific frontier justice and range war heritage that the Lincoln County War's historical significance sustains in the most complete surviving frontier town landscape in the territorial Southwest. Bonito Hollow RV Park and Campground serves guests year-round in Lincoln County's mountain climate, where the winter ski season at Ski Apache on the Mescalero Apache Reservation sustains the Sierra Blanca resort community from December through March, and the cool summer temperatures at 6,900 feet give the Alto campground the New Mexico mountain summer escape from the lowland desert heat that draws the Albuquerque and El Paso markets to the Sacramento Mountains for the summer months. The Ruidoso Downs Racetrack's American quarter horse racing season from late May through Labor Day and the Ruidoso Village's galleries, restaurants, and the Hubbard Museum of the American West give the campground's immediate day-trip range the summer resort character. Reserve sites ahead for ski season weekends and the Ruidoso summer race and resort tourism peak.