Cedar Hill, NM

Cedar Hill is a San Juan County CDP on U.S. 550 near the Colorado line, an unincorporated place whose name changed at a local Literary Society meeting. It was first known as Cox’s Crossing; the new name was chosen by drawing possibilities from a hat. The Cedar Hill Schoolhouse, built for the community in the early 1900s on land donated by George and Lula Tinker, became a lasting marker for the settlement and the families along the Animas River. Today the place is oriented by the highway, the old schoolhouse, and the nearby San Juan County landscape. The local story is small but specific: a crossing, a school, and a name picked in a room by neighbors.