Las Cruces

I thought it would be fun to do a google image search for something and post the random pictures that it brings up. I've been writing a story that takes place near Las Cruces, New Mexico (which I actually drove through last summer on tour), and so Las Cruces seemed a good search topic. The results were better than I thought they would be.

The mountain you see in a lot of them is Organ Mountain, which got that name because it looks like a giant pipe organ.

From the Wik:

Las Cruces' name (Spanish for "the crosses") has been a disputed topic among historians. One of the many folklore tales is that in 1830, there was an Apache massacre of a party of nine travelers, including a Mexican Army General, a priest, and five (or four) choir boys. Only one choir boy survived the massacre, and buried the others, marking the graves with crosses, according to the story that "Tio" Tuseño told tourists for a handout. According to one of the folktales, the area became known as "El Pueblo del Jardín de Las Cruces" ("The Village of the Garden of the Crosses").