The Summit Inn

A Practical Mountain Base

The Summit Inn sits at 8,676 feet on Chipmunk Avenue in central Cloudcroft, a short walk from the main street, restaurants, and shops. It’s a practical, affordable base for the Sacramento Mountains — close to hiking trails in Lincoln National Forest, the Trestle Recreation Area, the ice rink, and the museum area, with White Sands National Park 35 miles down the hill.

This is a small, owner-led, recently refreshed inn with a mom-and-pop feel rather than a destination hotel. There’s no on-site restaurant, bar, or lounge. What you get is a small property with individually named rooms, kitchenettes in at least some of them per third-party listings, and owners who have been actively renovating the inn since around 2021, with a two-year renovation milestone noted in August 2023. Cloudcroft Reader’s 2025 lodging guide describes it as “a recently remodeled piece of Cloudcroft history.”

The official rooms page lists units by name — the Alamogordo Room, Ruidoso Room, Santa Fe Room, Roswell Room, Las Cruces Room, and El Paso Room — with layouts that include single queens, a queen-plus-twin, a two-room suite, and a three-room suite. Booking lists each room as having a kitchenette. Expedia (third-party listed, not confirmed officially room by room) describes guestrooms with computer monitors, dining tables, heating, ceiling fans, hydromassage showers, 32-inch LCD TVs, and Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming services. Worth confirming directly which features apply to your room.

If your priorities are walkability, price relative to larger historic properties, and a small-inn feel, this is a strong pick. If you want on-site dining, resort amenities, or the atmosphere of The Lodge, look elsewhere.