Chaves County

By John LeMay and Historical Society for Southeast New Mexico

In 1889, Roswell patriarch Capt. Joseph C. Lea, Pat Garrett (the former sheriff who shot Billy the Kid), and land developer Charles B. Eddy ventured to the territorial council and house in Santa Fe to petition for the creation of two new counties from the massive Lincoln County in southeastern New Mexico. The request was granted and Chaves County officially came into being on February 25, 1889. Today, 120 years later, Chaves County still thrives with a population of more than 60,000 people and is the dairy capital of the Southwest, producing around 1.7 billion pounds of milk annually. Explored in this volume is Chaves County s earliest peoples and settlements, including Roswell, Dexter, Hagerman, Lake Arthur, and Elk. It also takes a look at long-forgotten towns such as Acme, Blackdom, Cumberland, Greenfield and even old ranching outfits and farms such as John Chisum s South Spring River headquarters, the Clifton Chisholm alfalfa farm, and many others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Dec 7, 2009
• ISBN: 9781439624562

John LeMay

John LeMay is the author of many books on the history of Roswell, Southeastern New Mexico, and the Southwest. His most recent book, Tall Tales & Half Truths of Billy the Kid, was published in 2015. Tall Tals & Half Truths of Pat Garrett is its sequel. LeMay is a past president of the Historical Society for Southeast New Mexico in Roswell.

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INTRODUCTION

In the early parts of 1889, three men with petitions from the people of Lincoln County, New Mexico, journeyed to the Territorial Council and House in Santa Fe to request the creation of two new counties, to be carved out of massive Lincoln County—the largest territory in the United States at the time. The three men were former Civil War captain Joseph C. Lea, former lawman Pat Garrett (who had killed outlaw Billy the Kid only eight years earlier), and New Mexico land developer Charles B. Eddy of Eddy, New Mexico (now Carlsbad).

The three men proposed that due to the size of their respective towns (Roswell and Eddy) and the distance between those towns and the county seat in Lincoln, two new counties could be created with Roswell as the seat of one county and Eddy the seat of the other.

The bill creating Chaves and Eddy Counties was passed on February 25, 1889, and from then on, both counties experienced considerable growth. In the next 10 years, Roswell grew to a population of several thousand people, and three new towns—Hagerman, Dexter, and Lake Arthur—were created as well. Chaves County and the towns in its jurisdiction largely owe their creation to the people of Roswell and their discoveries and achievements, namely artesian water and the coming of the railroad.

Roswell, New Mexico, had its origins in the New Mexico Indian problem and the Texas cattle trade. The two were closely related in this region, wrote James D. Shinkle in his landmark book Fifty Years of Roswell History 1867–1917, published in 1964. This is basically true, for without the problem of Native American raids across the state, Bosque Redondo, the reservation at Fort Sumner, would never have been created. Had Bosque Redondo never been created, there would have been no need for the large amounts of Texas beef needed to feed all of the Native Americans at the reservation. Without that, there would have been no Goodnight-Loving Cattle Trail blazed from Texas to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, and without that, there would have been no Roswell.

Like many places, Roswell started out as a barren piece of land. Eventually an entrepreneurial individual built a small trading post, which grew into a general store and post office, garnered its own name and township, enticed settlers and many head of cattle into the general vicinity, and grew into a city with a population of over 50,000 people more than 100 years later. That is Roswell’s history in a nutshell. Roswell began as mere 15-foot-by-15-foot adobe trading post built by an individual named James Patterson along the Goodnight-Loving Cattle Trail around 1867. With its flowing streams of water and grassy prairie, the Pecos Valley, in which Roswell was situated, was an ideal spot for many Texas cattle drivers to stop to water and feed their cattle.

In the late 1860s, New England–born Van C. Smith came along and bought the post, as well as a good number of horses and cattle, from Patterson and expanded it to become a hotel/restaurant/ casino. Next to it he also built a general store. At first, Roswell was not known as Roswell at all, but as Rio Hondo, a small Hispanic settlement in the area of Smith’s two buildings. (Rio Hondo, today called Chihuahuita, survived as its own community in Roswell.)

In 1872, Smith decided to call his place Roswell after his father, Roswell Smith of Nebraska. Smith also petitioned for his settlement to become a post office, and so it was in 1873 along a Star Mail Route between Las Vegas and La Mesilla. Roswell was not just the site of a post office though. Thanks to Smith’s infamous gambling habits, Roswell was a notorious place to visit in the territory. Author Lilly Klasner, in her work My Girlhood Among Outlaws, gives the impression that Roswell was not a place for respectable folks to visit back in its early days.

After completing his general store, Smith’s first order of business was to build not one but two parallel half-mile race tracks in Roswell. He even built a judges’ stand and went east to get racehorses for his tracks, but the fun didn’t stop with horse races. Smith also put on cock fights as well as dog fights, not to mention the seemingly endless card games, often lasting late into the night. People came from all over to take part in the betting, from Santa Fe to Albuquerque and even from other states. However, Smith’s gambling habits often caused him to neglect his small settlement and to eventually lose it altogether, for when no cattle herds passed through, or more importantly, there were no fellow gamblers to fraternize with, Smith high-tailed it to Santa Fe, Las Vegas, or Albuquerque for some excitement.

Roswell’s biggest stake in the lore of the Old West comes in the form of legendary cattle baron John S. Chisum, one of—if not the—wealthiest cattlemen in the Southwest. (Chisum was even portrayed by the Duke himself, John Wayne, in the title role of Chisum). Chisum too came to Roswell via the Goodnight-Loving Cattle Trail and was, for a brief time, a partner of Charles Goodnight. Chisum bought some property north of Roswell, then called the Bosque Grande, where he set up headquarters for a time. Chisum made the Roswell area his permanent home when he moved from the Bosque Grande headquarters to land south of Spring River, thus creating South Spring River Ranch.

As stated earlier, before the creation of Chaves County in 1889, Roswell was part of the wild and lawless Lincoln County, the largest territory in New Mexico as well as the United States. Roswell came into its own during the turbulent late 1870s of the Lincoln County War, in which opposing sides fought over land and government beef contracts. Thanks to Roswell’s stable leader, Capt. Joseph C. Lea, a Civil War veteran who