Travel America: Exploring Southern New Mexico: hot peppers and much more spice travel discoveries in

IF YOU'VE EVER PONDERED the source of New Mexico's famous tongue-tingling chile, look no further than the southern Rio Grande Valley, which boasts the world's largest chile crop. The unassuming village of Hatch is the state's most renowned chile-producing community and each Labor Day hosts the Hatch Chile Fiesta. We're talking about those zesty red chiles that smother enchiladas served throughout the state--from Artesia to Zuni.

Nearby Las Cruces, New Mexico's second largest city and home to New Mexico State University, has the nation's only chile institute and also stages an annual celebration in honor of the noble chile. At the Whole Enchilada Fiesta each October, the whole idea is to build the world's largest enchilada--a feat they somehow manage to accomplish year after year.

Notwithstanding the fame of its piquant peppers, the southern realm of the Land of Enchantment may be even more widely known for the likes of Carlsbad Caverns, Billy the Kid, Pancho Villa, UFOs--or even a mushroom cloud in the desert.

Las Cruces is not only about chile but is fast gaining a visitor following for its $7.4-million New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum, which opened in late 1998. Spread over 47 acres, the complex chronicles the 3,000-year history of New Mexico's agriculture and rural life. It features a working farm and ranch, live animals, more than 25,000 square feet of indoor exhibition space, a theater, demonstration kitchen, restaurant, old-time general store, and a farm-fresh produce market.

Neighboring Mesilla, however, remains the region's leading attraction. For centuries this picturesque adobe village was a center of Spanish colonial influence, and its well-preserved Plaza stands much as it did the day it witnessed the signing of the Gadsden Purchase in 1853. Nowadays Mesilla hosts a variety of celebrations, including a colorful Cinco de Mayo (May 5) Fiesta.

To the west, the border town of Columbus earned a unique footnote in the annals of American history when, on March 16, 1916, Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa sent 400 of his troops on a pre-dawn raid of the town. The incursion was soon thwarted, but the incident remains the last time a hostile foreign force crossed a U.S. border.

Another of the West's most legendary desperadoes, Billy the Kid, waited tables at the Star Hotel in Silver City as a youth. It was in the violence-prone village of Lincoln some miles to the east that the Kid really made a name for himself, but Silver City managed a fine reputation as a rowdy mining town without him. Much of its 19th century Victorian architecture survives to this day, charming the many visitors who choose Silver City as a base for exploring the surrounding ghost towns of Shakespeare, Steins, Kingston, and Mogollon--and the mystery-shrouded remains of an ancient Indian culture at Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument.

Driving eastward across a dramatic landscape of basin and range, visitors can roam a national monument of an entirely different kind near Alamogordo. White Sands National Monument is an astonishing 275-square-mile sea of sugar-white gypsum sand shaped by the wind into the most beautiful dunes this side of the Sahara. It was just to the north of Alamogordo--at Trinity Site on White Sands Missile Range--that the world's first atomic bomb was detonated in 1945. Tours are available twice a year, on the first Saturday in April and October, to visit the actual blast site.

One of Southern New Mexico's most scenic drives leads east from Alamogordo up through Lincoln National Forest to the alpine village of Cloudcrotl and on to the popular all-season resort town of Ruidoso. Outdoor enthusiasts favor this little mountain town for its fine golf courses, hiking, biking, and fishing, while others are drawn to a summer-long series of thoroughbred and quarter horse racing at Ruidoso Downs and casino gambling at the nearby Mescalero Apache reservation. The Mescalero tribe also operates the sprawling Inn of the Mountain Go& resort and Ski Apache, the nation's southernmost major ski area, on the slopes of 12,003-foot-high Sierra Blanca.

Cultural interests in the region got a giant boost with the 1997 opening of the $20-million Spencer Theater for the Performing Arts, a stunning wedge-shaped complex situated atop a scenic mesa just north of Ruidoso. Proclaimed the finest performance hall in the Southwest, it offers a year-round schedule of Broadway shows, classical, pops, and jazz concerts, and dance performances.

The historic village of Lincoln, a few miles northeast of Ruidoso, looks much like it did when Billy the Kid and others ignited the bloody Lincoln County War of 1878. Here you can tour some 40 restored buildings, including the old courthouse from which Billy made his last escape.

Just about anyone in the southeastern plains community of Roswell can tell you the story of a farmer who discovered a downed UFO, along with the bodies of several alien beings, on his property in 1947. The "Roswell Incident" has been the subject of interminable controversy and the ongoing publicity has made the city an international focal point for UFO-related activities. There are two museums devoted to the subject and for a nominal fee you can visit the purported crash site.

Sequestered beneath a swatch of rugged desert terrain on the flanks of the Guadalupe Mountains about 27 miles south of Carlsbad, Carlsbad Caverns National Park has been New Mexico's leading visitor attraction for more than 75 years. The breathtaking main cavern, known as the Big Room, is the largest natural cave in North America, occupying an area roughly the size of 14 football fields. A mile-long guided tour leads visitors past an assortment of weird and wonderful limestone formations that have been millions of years in the making.

Living Desert State Park is another interesting attraction in the Carlsbad area. A zoo and botanical gardens, it features the flora and fauna of the Chihuahuan Desert.

Contact: New Mexico Department of Tourism, (800) 545-2040; www.new mexico.org.