The Castner Range Poppies

Off to your left as you descend rises the Castner Range — a wild, undeveloped shoulder of the Franklins, and one of El Paso's great conservation victories. For decades it was an Army firing range; then developers eyed it for houses, and for years local people fought to save it from the bulldozers. In twenty twenty-three they finally won, and it became a national monument, protected for good. But here's the gem, the thing you have to time just right: in the spring, after a wet winter, these brown desert slopes can erupt into a blaze of orange — a super-bloom of Mexican gold poppies so bright it stops traffic on this highway, one of the most spectacular wildflower displays anywhere in the Southwest. Most years it's subtle; but in a good year, for a week or two, the whole mountain catches fire with poppies. If you've hit it right, you will never forget it.