The story
White Oaks boomed in 1879 after gold turned up in the Jicarilla Mountains, and the Homestake and South Homestake mines made it one of the largest towns in the territory — booster accounts put the peak as high as 4,000 and called it second only to Santa Fe, though the 1880 census counted about 800. Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and other Lincoln County names passed through its saloons.
The town's undoing was arrogance. When the railroads came surveying in the late 1890s, White Oaks' landowners assumed the lines would compete for their town and charged premium prices for right-of-way. Instead the railroad ran its tracks twelve miles west through empty ground and created Carrizozo. With the mines playing out at the same time, the reason to live in White Oaks left with the trains.
What remains today
The two-story brick schoolhouse (a museum), the Hoyle mansion, several brick storefronts and homes, the cemetery, and the No Scum Allowed Saloon, still pouring drinks.
Questions from the field
- Was White Oaks really the second-largest town in New Mexico?
- That's a booster claim from its boom years and hard to verify — the 1880 census recorded about 800 people, though the town grew larger before the mines faded. What's certain is that it was one of the territory's major gold camps.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
Stamp your passport
Check in at White Oaks — GPS-verified visits earn an inked stamp.
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Road conditions, what's still standing, what's gone — your report joins the record.
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Primary sources for this record
- — USGS GNIS feature 912313
- — Western Mining History — White Oaks, New Mexico
- — Legends of America — White Oaks, New Mexico