Also a little background into the local legends as to the origins of the name:
"The most popular theory is that sometime during the 1700s, a bishop, a priest, a Mexican army colonel, four trappers and four choirboys were attacked near the Rio Grande and only one choirboy survived. He put up crosses at the site and the area became known as El Pueblo del Jardin de Las Cruces, or City of the Garden of the Crosses."
The Organ Mountains and Las Cruces, as seen from the Rio Grande.
When I was a boy growing up in Las Cruces back in the 40s, there were three crosses on a hill just east of town that had been there since the town was founded. The last time I went through there, the crosses were gone, and I have often wondered why they took them down.