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Hello, I am currently in the process of trying to find a small town in New Mexico to move to. We'll need a place that is close to a town with jobs year round with out having to travel over 70 miles. I WAS looking at Chama,nm but I found out it is to far from jobs (to bad it looked like an AMAZING town) so I was wondering if someone could tell me about Eagle Nest? The realty looks great up there as well as the climate! I just need to know where does everyone go for jobs and grocery shopping? What's the "big town" you travel to?
For anything more than the most basic of shopping, Eagle Nest residents will typically drive into Taos. Santa Fe and Albuquerque are common destinations as well if Taos comes up short.
I'm not sure why, but most Taoseños will add an "s", making it "Eagles Nest" when they speak about the place. Kinda odd actually.
Jobs will be not much more common than in Chama, particularly non-seasonal ones. Then again, Colfax county has a fast-dropping unemployment rate (below 6%) which may or may not help, given that much of its population lives in far-off Raton or Springer, and these are where the jobs are more likely to be.
Eagle Nest according to city-data gets about 35 inches of snow a year.
Some roads get plowed, but it's about as bad as it gets for New Mexico. Some people bring their cute little coupe with slicks on it and expect to do just fine on the roads in the winter; if you relocate I'd not do that.
The weather makes for a strong tourism economy (skiing resorts), but otherwise hampers the local economy as things get shut down frequently and people can't make it in to work. Every few years (Chama got it bad a couple years back) the snow is so deep that you literally can't open your door and there's no way of telling where houses, roads, trees, etc. are.
How bad are the roads in the winter time? (I live in a town where we get probably 3 inch of snow a year....) Particularly the 64?
And no long-time resident of the Rocky Mountain West refers to any highway as "The" followed by a highway number. That immediately brands you as an outsider, which, in this region, is often not a good thing.
We have a place in Angel Fire and are frequently there, even in the winter.
There are few jobs working for someone else in Eagle Nest, unless you want to tend bar, have a building trade like plumbing and can get by with part time work, etc. Any other jobs would likely be in Taos, and Eagle Nest is about 45 minutes-an hour from Taos, normally. I see that city-data reports the average snowfall in Eagle Nest as 35 inches, but I don't know where that number came from. Angel Fire is reported as nearly the same average, but Angel Fire got about 200 inches of snow last winter. It got to the point where one more snowfall would have forced us to park on the road because there was no more room for the snow plow to put snow from our driveway. In 2006, when we got the 18 inch post-Christmas snowfall in the ABQ area, Angel Fire got 48 inches.
Travel to/from Taos would take you through Pacheco Pass (>9,000 feet) and Taos Canyon. The state and county do a remarkable job keeping the road plowed and treated with crushed lava rock, but it can still be a dicey drive in the winter. 64 south out of Eagle Nest and on toward the pass is across the valley and susceptible to blowing snow that can ice over quickly. That said, there are a number of folks who do live in Eagle Nest or Angel Fire and drive to/from Taos daily.
jazzlover's comments about the 64 are right on mark. It's simply US 64, or just 64.
I love Eagle Nest during the warm part of the year, but I wouldn't want to be there all winter. The cold and snow would get old quickly for me. I realize that some people like that, and I'm glad because if they didn't, towns like that might not even exist. But after early October, it wouldn't be a good place for me.
To the OP, have you been to Taos? Do you not think it's a "small town"? To me it's a small town, and to people I know who've lived there it's a "very small town." They go to Santa Fe and Albuquerque for a "big town."
Maybe you're coming from a place where big and small towns are all next to each other. New Mexico is not like that.
As for saying "the 64" or just "64" who cares? If you're an "outsider" you're an outsider, no use pretending you're not.
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(to bad it looked like an AMAZING town) so I was wondering if someone could tell me about Eagle Nest? The realty looks great up there as well as the climate! I just need to know where does everyone go for jobs and grocery shopping? What's the "big town" you travel to?
ehehe
