Las Cruces

Las Cruces, also known as "The City of the Crosses", is the county seat of Doña Ana County, New Mexico, United States. As of 2013 the population is 101,324 making it the second largest city in the state, after Albuquerque.

Las Cruces is the economic and geographic center of the fertile Mesilla Valley, which is the agricultural region on the flood plain of the Rio Grande which extends from Hatch to the west side of El Paso, Texas. Las Cruces is also the home of New Mexico State University (NMSU), New Mexico's only land grant university. The city's major employer is the federal government on nearby White Sands Test Facility and White Sands Missile Range. The Organ Mountains, ten miles (16 km) to the east, are dominant in the city's landscape, along with the Doña Ana Mountains, Robledo Mountains, and Picacho Peak.

Las Cruces in Supervolcano
When Vanessa Ferguson was driving home to Los Angeles two and a half years after the Yellowstone Supervolcano eruption, she pulled off the I-10 to a truck stop just west of Las Cruces. She had noticed the mountains in the area were half covered with snow even though it allegedly was spring. Where they weren't covered, there was gray-brown ash from the eruption.

At the truck stop, Ferguson first gassed up her car and then went to the nearby Denny's for lunch. As she walked in, she noticed a couple of Bradley Fighting Vehicles stopped nearby with their cannons trained on the parking lot. The I-10 was Los Angeles' lifeline and the US Government was making sure there wasn't any trouble.

Ferguson had a cheeseburger with coleslaw for lunch and met Bronislav Nedic when he came in and sat down next to her at the counter. The two hit it off and exchanged telephone numbers when Ferguson learned he was heading to L.A. with a truckload of frozen chickens. The two finished, paid and left but went their separate ways.