Golf in Jal

Jal is one of the smallest incorporated cities in Lea County, positioned near the Texas state line at roughly 3,400 feet in the southeastern corner of New Mexico where the Chihuahuan Desert meets the Permian Basin. The community was sustained for decades by oil production, and the presence of both Jal Country Club and Jal Lake Practice Golf Course reflects the recreational infrastructure that petroleum-era prosperity built in even the smallest communities of this region. Jal Lake provides a local natural feature in an otherwise flat, semi-arid landscape. The city's position near the Loving and Monument Draw oil fields has connected it to regional energy economics for most of the twentieth century, sustaining social institutions that would be economically implausible in an agricultural-only community of equivalent size.