Playas is a

census-designated place A census-designated place (CDP) is a Place (United States Census Bureau), concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only. CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counte ...

(CDP) in Hidalgo County,

New Mexico New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. It also ...

, United States. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 74.

History

It is a former

company town A company town is a place where all or most of the stores and housing in the town are owned by the same company that is also the main employer. Company towns are often planned with a suite of amenities such as stores, houses of worship, schoo ...

, named after a nearby former settlement along the

Southern Pacific Railroad The Southern Pacific (or Espee from the railroad initials) was an American Railroad classes#Class I, Class I Rail transport, railroad network that existed from 1865 to 1996 and operated largely in the Western United States. The system was oper ...

. It was developed by the

Phelps Dodge Corporation Phelps Dodge Corporation was an American mining company founded in 1834 as an import-export firm by Anson Greene Phelps and his two sons-in-law William Earle Dodge, Sr. and Daniel James (businessman), Daniel James. The latter two ran Phelps, Jame ...

in the 1970s for employees of its then-new Hidalgo

Copper Copper is a chemical element; it has symbol Cu (from Latin ) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish-orang ...

Smelter Smelting is a process of applying heat and a chemical reducing agent to an ore to extract a desired base metal product. It is a form of extractive metallurgy that is used to obtain many metals such as iron, copper, silver, tin, lead and zin ...

, located south of the development. Over 270 rental homes, six apartment buildings, a post office, grocery/dry goods store (Phelps Dodge Mercantile), medical clinic with heliport, a

bowling alley A bowling alley (also known as a bowling center, bowling lounge, bowling arena, or historically bowling club) is a facility where the sport of bowling is played. It can be a dedicated facility or part of another, such as a clubhouse or dwelling ...

("Copper Pins"), grill, a

rodeo Rodeo () is a competitive equestrian sport that arose out of the working practices of cattle herding in Spain and Mexico, expanding throughout the Americas and to other nations. It was originally based on the skills required of the working vaqu ...

arena, horse stables, a fitness center, a shooting range, an airstrip and a swimming pool were built for the community, which even has its own ZIP Code (88009). At its peak, the town had about 1,100 residents and included two churches built on land leased from the mining company. The smelter, which included state of the art environmental controls, a power plant and sulfuric acid plants, was closed by the company as part of a move towards new processing technologies for processing copper concentrates. Declining copper prices accelerated the closure in 1999; all of its residents were required to leave within a year, though a skeleton crew of about a dozen employees remained in the area. Before completion of razing the plant and reclamation of the site, the smelter, about north of the border with

Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...

, was nicknamed '' La Estrella del Norte'' by illegal migrants using its lights as a beacon for crossing into the country. Four years later, New Mexico Tech agreed to purchase the town and the surrounding for $5 million, using

Department of Homeland Security The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the interior, home, or public security ministries in other countries. Its missions invol ...

funds secured by Senator

Pete Domenici Pietro Vichi "Pete" Domenici ( ; May 7, 1932 – September 13, 2017) was an American attorney and politician who served as a United States Senator from New Mexico from 1973 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, he served six terms in ...

. The town is now a training and research facility (the Playas Training and Research Center, operated by New Mexico Tech's EMRTC) for the university's

first responder A first responder is a person with specialized training who is among the first to arrive and provide assistance or incident resolution at the scene of an emergency. First responders typically include Law enforcement, law enforcement officers (co ...

counter-terrorism Counterterrorism (alternatively spelled: counter-terrorism), also known as anti-terrorism, relates to the practices, military tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, law enforcement, businesses, and intelligence agencies use to co ...

, and Air Force programs, supported by tens of millions of dollars in federal funds.

Geography

Playas is located in eastern Hidalgo County and is bordered to the east by

Grant County Grant County may refer to: Places ;Australia * County of Grant, Victoria ;United States * Grant County, Arkansas * Grant County, Indiana * Grant County, Kansas *Grant County, Kentucky Grant County is a county located in the northern pa ...

. It is at the south terminus of New Mexico State Road 113 south of New Mexico State Road 9, east-southeast of Animas, west of Hachita and south of Lordsburg, the Hidalgo County seat. It sits at the northwestern base of the Little Hatchet Mountains, on the east side of the Playas Valley.''New Mexico Atlas & Gazetteer,'' DeLorme, 5th ed., 2009, p.53 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Playas CDP has an area of , all land.

Demographics

References

External links

Playas Training and Research Center

from the ''

International Herald Tribune The ''International Herald Tribune'' (''IHT'') was a daily English-language newspaper published in Paris, France, for international English-speaking readers. It published under the name ''International Herald Tribune'' starting in 1967, but its ...

''
Playas Purchase Boosts Homeland Security

Photographic and site description at CLUI

Playas contextualized in "Cities Under Siege" by Stephen Graham

Pete Domenici press releases