Bottomless Lakes
Mike Smith
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You would think the strangest place in the vicinity of Roswell, New Mexico, would be the alleged UFO crash site north of town. It is not.
The strangest place in Roswell by far has always been Bottomless Lakes.
Bottomless Lakes State Park, the very first state park to be sanctioned in New Mexico, is located 12 miles east of Roswell and was established back in 1933 by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) during the Great Depression.
Of course the lakes’ histories themselves date back much further than 1933 and their discoveries and origins are fairly cryptic. Some Roswell residents whisper that the Indians that used to live near the lakes moved away from them because they felt the lakes were haunted. Even stranger is the fact Dr. James W. Sutherland, the first doctor to arrive in Roswell back in 1882, had in his possession a manuscript pertaining to the discovery of the lakes which he would never let anyone else see.
The lakes were first discovered in the 1840s by an old Indian fighter from Texas named Gabriel Thompson. Thompson was chasing some Apaches towards the mountains when he came across the lakes. Although he was barely literate, Thompson wrote an account of his adventure which years later Dr. Sutherland somehow acquired. What mysteries, if any, the document held can only be speculated upon since, “It was one of the peculiarities of Dr. Sutherland that he didn’t trust anybody, and all efforts to get access to the story of the hunter proved unavailing,” wrote Will Robinson back in 1948 for an article in The Roswell Morning Dispatch.
The lakes would further puzzle cowboys traveling the Goodnight-Loving Trail when they attempted to determine the depths of the lakes. Tying rocks to their lariats the cowhands threw them in the lake, and when one would not reach the bottom they would tie another and then another and so on never finding the bottom. Hence the sinkholes were named Bottomless Lakes. What the men did not realize, however, was that the lakes were not in fact bottomless but instead their lariats had simply been swept away by underwater currents.
Now eight of the nine lakes, in actuality sinkholes ranging from 17 to 90 feet in depth, are part of Bottomless Lakes State Park encompassing 1,611 acres open to the public. Hiking trails are available throughout the park, swimming and scuba diving are allowed in the clear waters of Lea Lake, and fishing is allowed in several others stocked with catfish and Rainbow Trout as long as you have a license.
“I really think that Bottomless Lakes does not get the publicity that it deserves. It is a beautiful place to take friends, family, or just go out and enjoy nature,” says Roswell resident (and all around very cool guy) Will Bullard.
While Bottomless Lakes are a great place to go some people seem to be spooked by them. Why is this? Even though Bottomless Lakes may have no hard evidence to back up the urban legends purported to have happened there, one thing it does have is stories…lots and lots of stories.
One of the earliest goes that a horse drowned in one of the Figure Eight lakes (two adjoining lakes that form a figure eight) only to reappear in the other. People also like to speculate that the lakes are connected to underground currents that flow southeast to Carlsbad Caverns. The best story to exemplify this (which like any good yarn can never actually be proven) was told by a Roswell woman several years back about an incident in the 1970s. It goes that the woman and a friend were waiting in a car parked near the shore of one of the lakes and heard something moving about in the darkness outside. The two women got out of the car to look around and when they returned to the vehicle it had mysteriously disappeared. The car, according to the story, would later reappear in Carlsbad Caverns.
Stranger still, the woman telling the story said she thought that “something” had dragged the car into the lake.
Like any large body of water Bottomless Lakes has its fair share of alleged monsters.
A security guard boating on one of the lakes back in the 1980s was said to have felt a disturbance under the water as if a large creature had swam beneath his boat. He also was said to have glimpsed a brown hump come out of the water evoking shades of the Loch Ness Monster.
Even stranger is the rumor that a duckbilled dinosaur was also possibly glimpsed there, as well as a dragon. Another story goes that divers back in the 1960s saw large sea turtles in Lea Lake. Once the divers returned to the surface and told everyone about the turtles and then went back down the turtles had mysteriously vanished. Another anecdote goes that back in the 1930s sea turtles were found in the lake only to be captured and eaten by hungry residents. Strangest of all though was the half-man half-octopus rearing itself out of the lake in yet another tall tale.
Bottomless Lakes it seems also used to be a popular spot for couples to park late at night on dates. And like the hook-handed man that used to terrorize necking teenagers in Lover’s Lanes across the US, so the lakes have their spooks and boogey men. Of course, being in New Mexico they’re a lot weirder.
A young couple was said to have been attacked in their car one night by, of all things, a skirt-wearing giant (although in the giant’s defense the skirt was really more like the type that would be worn by a Roman Centurion). According to the couple the seven-foot-tall being with “large eyes” jumped onto the roof of their car at which point the driver sped off trying to shake it from the vehicle. Another story goes that a group of young people were chased in their car one night by a white ghost horse near the lakes.
Again, although many colorful urban legends abound near the lakes there’s really no substantial evidence to back them up.
“I have not heard the ghost horse or the sea turtle stories. I have heard of the others and/or variations of such....monsters and things sinking in the Bottomless Lakes only to reappear in Carlsbad Caverns. Of course none of these stories are true.” says Steve Patterson, the manager of Bottomless Lakes State Park. “There have been strange stories about these lakes for generations. I think that deep lakes in the middle of the desert just seem to promote such far out stories. Most of the stories originated many years ago when the depth of the lakes was unknown and survived in one form or another.”
So in the end you can most likely go to Bottomless Lakes State Park and safely enjoy its many wonders without having to worry about enduring your own personal horror story of being chased by ghost horses, sea turtles, or skirt-wearing giants. Unless you want to make one up…
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To get to Bottomless Lakes State Park and enjoy all it has to offer go twelve miles east of Roswell on U.S. Highway 380, then seven miles south on New Mexico Highway 409.
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Reader Comments (7)
This is my favorite Roswell Edition yet. It's the first--well, one of the first--that really made me wish I had found this story and written it before you did. I'm jealous.
It's pretty awesome, and you wrote it well.
Keep up the great work!
SJR
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