Cloudcroft Power House

The railroad built this power plant during the summer of 1899 to provide power for the Pavilion and Lodge, then extended lines to Cloudcroft's business district, residences, and later east to new electric water pumps near the present ski area. Its hours of operation were limited, and the power was flashed on and off fifteen minutes before shutting down for the night. Built in a depression in the center of a horseshoe bend in the main rail line leading to the depot, the plant was often a passenger's first glimpse of Cloudcroft. In March 1941, the Southern Pacific Railroad sold the plant and all local distribution lines to the fledgling Otero County Electric Cooperative, and this plant and a similar one at Wimsatt, or Twin Forks, generated all the cooperative's power until the local electric system was connected to the regional Plains Electric Generation and Transmission Cooperative grid about 1951–52. The boilers initially burned cord wood, then switched to coal shortly after the railroad was extended to a large coal mine at Dawson, New Mexico, in 1903, and later changed to more economical fuel oil sometime during the 1910s or 20s after oil discoveries in West Texas. A rail spur above the plant let fuel cars be spotted conveniently next to a chute, later a pipe, dropping down to the plant.

Cloudcroft, New Mexico · United States