Claim Jumper A-Frame 6

Eagle Nest Lake on the Enchanted Circle, with the mountains of the Moreno Valley rising behind it.

It begins and ends in Taos and circles the highest mountain in New Mexico: the 84-mile Enchanted Circle Scenic Byway is northern New Mexico's grand tour, and Red River sits right on it.

The route follows four highways — U.S. 64 between Eagle Nest and Taos, NM 522 from Taos to Questa, NM 38 through Questa, Red River, and Eagle Nest, and NM 434 between Eagle Nest and Angel Fire — looping around 13,161-foot Wheeler Peak through the Carson National Forest. It was designated a National Forest Scenic Byway in 1989 and joined New Mexico's state scenic byway program in 1998.

Read more about 84 Miles Around the Mountain: The Enchanted Circle Scenic Byway

The sun sets behind Wheeler Peak, New Mexico's highest summit, in the Sangre de Cristo Range.

At 13,161 feet, Wheeler Peak is the highest point in New Mexico — and the rugged country around it is among the most protected ground in the state. The 19,661-acre Wheeler Peak Wilderness, tucked into the Carson National Forest just south of Red River, became the forest's first federally designated wilderness in 1964.

Read more about New Mexico's Rooftop: The Making of the Wheeler Peak Wilderness

Long before trout became a Red River pastime, they were a Red River product. A hatchery has stood in the valley near Questa since 1941, and today the Red River State Fish Hatchery produces about 1.7 million rainbow trout a year — more than the state's four other hatcheries combined. It is the largest production hatchery in New Mexico.

Read more about A Million Trout a Year: The Red River State Fish Hatchery

Workers building the timber trestle of a mining flume near Red River in the 1910s, photographed on a glass plate by Robert L. Campbell.

Before the ski lifts and the motorcycles, Red River was River City — a rowdy gold camp perched at 8,750 feet in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Oral history says the town was founded on July 3, 1895, by Colorado miner Edward I. Jones and the Red River City Town and Mineral Company. It took its name from the stream running through it, which turns red with silt after heavy rains.

Read more about River City Days: Red River's Gold-Camp Founding in 1895

Red River's ski slopes above town in a black-and-white photograph from about 1980, the runs cut through the spruce forest above the rooftops.

When Oklahoma oil man Stokes Bolton rolled into Red River in the 1950s, the town counted barely a dozen year-round residents. He had never skied a run in his life. What he had was an entrepreneur's eye: the steep, snowy slopes rising above town looked like a business waiting to happen. In 1959 he opened the Red River Ski and Summer Area with a rope tow, a poma platter lift, and a chairlift cobbled together from salvaged oil derricks — and a ski town was born.