Tortugas, NM population, income and ZIP codes

Tortugas CDP is a very small community in New Mexico, with 642 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #216 of 527 ranked by population — larger than 59% of them. The median age here is 55.2 years against 39.1 nationally, a markedly older profile that usually tracks retirees staying put and younger households leaving for work. At this population the ACS sample is small, so the margin of error around every dollar figure below is wide — treat the numbers as a band, not a point, and expect them to move between annual releases without the place itself changing.

Households in Tortugas CDP earn a median of $29,096 a year, 63% below the national figure of $78,538 and 46% below the $54,029 median for the 153 New Mexico cities we cover. The median is the midpoint household, not an average, so a handful of very high earners cannot drag it upward the way they distort a mean. Poverty reaches 30.4% of residents here, well above the 12.4% national rate, which is the single clearest signal in this dataset that median income here is carried by a narrow band of households.

The typical owner-occupied home in Tortugas CDP is valued at not published, while median gross rent runs not published a month. 87% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, an owner-dominated market where rental listings are scarce and rent medians rest on a thin sample. Rent is reported gross — contract rent plus tenant-paid utilities — which is why it runs above the advertised price on a listing for the same unit.

A median age of 55.2 puts Tortugas CDP well into retirement-weighted territory, which pulls median household income down even where household wealth is high, because retirement draws are counted differently from wages. With 642 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare Tortugas CDP against its county rather than against national figures.

The Census withheld home value, gross rent for Tortugas CDP because the sample was too thin to publish at this geography. Those values were suppressed at the source, not lost in our dataset, and we do not model a replacement. Everything else on this page comes straight from the ACS 2019-2023 ACS 5-year tables.