Lincoln National Forest, National Forest in Sacramento Mountains, New Mexico, USA

Lincoln National Forest spans across the Sacramento Mountains as a protected forest with a wide range of elevations and habitat types across its grounds. The land shifts from grasslands and desert terrain at lower levels to dense coniferous forests at higher elevations.

The Lincoln Forest Reserve was created by presidential proclamation on July 26, 1902, covering 545,256 acres around Capitan and Lincoln. Theodore Roosevelt's Executive Order 908 of July 1908 merged it with the Gallinas tract and folded the Guadalupe and Sacramento forests into the new Alamo National Forest. On June 6, 1917, Woodrow Wilson transferred Alamo's lands to Lincoln, greatly enlarging it; the Gallinas portion passed to Cibola in 1945.

The land was home to the Niit'a-héõde band of the Mescalero Apache before European settlement. The forest's name comes from Lincoln County, where the 1902 Lincoln Forest Reserve was first set aside around Capitan and Lincoln. The Smokey Bear Ranger District, headquartered in Ruidoso, is named for the cub found after a 1950 fire.

The forest offers numerous trails and camping areas spread throughout for those wanting to spend time outdoors and explore on foot. Visitors should prepare for changing weather conditions depending on the season and elevation where they plan to go.

The forest's first supervisor, Arthur Ringland, appointed after the 1908 consolidation, later founded the international relief organization CARE. The Smokey Bear Ranger District headquartered in Ruidoso carries the name of the cub rescued from a 1950 fire, a story tied to these mountains rather than to the whole forest.