Lodge, The Golf Course

Few golf courses in North America can claim an address quite like this one. Cloudcroft sits at roughly 9,000 feet in the Sacramento Mountains of southern New Mexico, making The Lodge Golf Course one of the highest-elevation layouts in the country. The thin air means shots fly noticeably farther than the yardage markers suggest, and the cool, pine-scented mountain climate offers a striking contrast to the desert heat of the Rio Grande valley far below.

The course is part of The Lodge Resort, a historic property that dates to the early 1900s when the Alamogordo and Sacramento Mountain Railway brought tourists up from the lowlands to escape the summer heat. That heritage lends the whole setting a genuine sense of old-fashioned character — this is a place people have been coming to for more than a century.

Playing golf here is fundamentally about the surroundings: ponderosa pines, mountain meadows, and air cool enough to require a jacket even in July. The course reflects the terrain honestly rather than imposing itself upon it.