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Roswell, New Mexico: what is actually here

A town of modest size with a wildly outsized story, an unexpectedly good state park, and a free zoo. This guide is ten pages deep, every third-party fact taken from the operator's own site and dated on the page.

Start with things to do
A wide view of the property's mature landscaping and lawn.
By Lana, host of Lana’s Desert HavenLast updated

Most of what is written about Roswell online is written by people who have not been here. It reads like it: the same six sentences about 1947, a list of attractions lifted from somewhere else, and no idea how far anything is from anything.

These guides go the other way. Every opening time, admission price, park fee and distance below was taken from the operator’s own website during the week this site was built, and each page carries the date it was checked. Where a figure was not published — and several were not — the page says so and links out rather than guessing. A wrong opening time sends you to a closed door, which is worse than admitting we do not know.

The other thing worth saying: Roswell rewards low expectations and punishes high ones. Arrive expecting a polished tourist destination and you will be disappointed. Arrive expecting a working small city in the Pecos valley that happens to have built an entire civic identity around one strange week in 1947, plus eight sinkhole lakes and a free zoo, and you will have a genuinely good few days.

The ten guides

Four long ones and six focused ones. If you read only two, read things to do and Bottomless Lakes.

The four-fact version

If you only take four things from this whole hub, take these.

  • The International UFO Museum is open daily, 9AM to 5PM, and adult admission is $7. It is on North Main Street downtown. The full guide is here.
  • Bottomless Lakes State Park is 15 miles southeast, a chain of eight sinkhole lakes 17 to 90 feet deep with a swimming beach at Lea Lake. Day-use entry is $10.00 per vehicle for non-residents. Full guide.
  • Spring River Zoo is free for everyone, across about 34 acres of parkland. Note that the carousel and train are temporarily closed. More on the kids page.
  • Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge is 7 miles northeast of Roswell, in Chaves County, open sunrise to sunset, and holds one of the most diverse dragonfly populations in North America. On the day-trips page.

Checked 16 August 2026. Hours, prices and dates change — confirm with the UFO Museum, New Mexico State Parks, the City of Roswell and US Fish & Wildlife Service before you go.

A note on where this guide comes from

These pages are published by the owner of a rental house here, and you should factor that in when you read them. What it means in practice is that the recommendations are not paid for — there are no affiliate links and no sponsored placements anywhere on this site — and that we have an obvious interest in you enjoying the town enough to come back.

It also means the guides tell you when something is not worth it, because sending you to a disappointing afternoon does not serve anyone. Our editorial policy sets out how these pages are researched and corrected, and who writes them.

And yes, there is a house: a three-bedroom place with a fenced garden about fifteen minutes from everything above. That is the business model, stated plainly rather than smuggled in.