The Alamogordo and Sacramento Mountain Railroad ran from Alamogordo into the Sacramento Mountains, reaching Cloudcroft in May 1900 and making Cloudcroft Depot the terminus of the famous "Cloud Climbing Route." Along the line were distinctive engineering works including the "S" Trestle with two combined thirty-degree curves, the Mexican Canyon Trestle as the tallest on the railroad, Bailey Canyon trestles on sharp curves, and a switchback built so trains could reverse over especially steep terrain. Steam engines stopped for water at the B.F. Wooten property, where a spring fed a sixteen-foot-diameter tank. The route also passed Mountain Park Station, home of Bill Mauldin and a village known for orchards and fruit growers, High Rolls, where passengers could buy locally grown fruit about fourteen miles from Alamogordo, and Pinto, where the line wound through Fresnal Canyon past farms, ranches, Bridal Veil falls, two trestles, and a U-turn sharp enough for passengers to glimpse the engineer. One of the railroad's fifty-eight timber-frame trestles crossed Salado Canyon, and much of the timber cut in the Sacramento Mountains was carried on the railroad to the Alamogordo saw mill. At Alamogordo, the depot began in 1898 as a tent with a wooden floor, the building was finished in 1907, and it served as the terminus of the El Paso and Northeastern Railroad from El Paso to Alamogordo and the starting point for the Alamogordo and Sacramento Mountain Railroad.