Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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In the name of school spirit, five Clovis High students scaled a fence protecting the old locomotive at Hillcrest Park in 1959 and made off with the train’s bell. The five boys never told anybody that it was them that “borrowed the bell” which can still be heard today ringing at Clovis High School home football games. George Reiser, who still lives in Clovis, said they never got credit for getting that bell, and were really unsung heroes to all the kids at high school. At halftime of Friday’s Clovis High alumni footbal...
I received a note from a popular musician living in Lubbock. “We’re coming back home to Clovis after having lived in Lubbock for the last 30 years,” it read. “My brother Coy and his wife Jeanie have bought Glen Shot’s place north of Clovis just outside the city limits . In addition to the home, there is a big dance barn which we’re calling the “Country Barn.” My wife Peggy and I will have a home adjacent to the Country Barn. Our four-piece band will be playing for dances normally twice a month on Saturdays through the summer...
Early in 1954, Clovis City Commissioner Roy Walker wrote a letter to Earnest S. Marsh, vice-president of the Santa Fe Railroad in Chicago. In so many words, the city of Clovis was asking the railroad for a locomotive that would be displayed in Hillcrest Park. Walker and the other commissioners knew Clovis had an ace in the hole: Earnest S. Marsh had come with his parents and siblings to Clovis in 1909, at age 6. In 1918, he went to work as a file clerk at the railroad and rose in rank to become the head of the railroad in...
House moving is not the most causal job in the world. In the summer of 1950, Homer Bennett and his six-man Clovis crew of house movers went to Dawson up near Raton to move the homes of 2,500 people. Bennett’s job was to jack up and move out all the buildings to buyers all over the country. The reason? The coal town of Dawson had just been closed following the shutdown of the Phelps Dodge-owned coal mine, on which the town had depended for 50 years. Dawson was a company town, and the company was officially called the Stag C...
School reunions are fun to go to because you can see how much older your classmates have gotten than yourself. My sister from Abilene and I will attend the Claud-Pleasant Hill Community Reunion at the fire station at Pleasant Hill from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Aug. 10. My sister Mary Lou and I attended school at Claud up to 1944. Then we moved into Clovis. My older brother attended two years at Pleasant Hill. I expect our classmates from Claud will be outnumbered by the classmates of Pleasant Hill. The community of P.H., which...
You will not find information about “The Jungleland,” which was a popular amusement place in Clovis, in any of our history books. Most of what we know is from the late Gordon Fitzhugh, who graduated from Clovis High School in 1928. Sometime in the late 1920s, Fitzhugh joined high school music professor Verdi Croft’s “dance combo” orchestra. This is what he said about Jungleland in the late 1920s and 1930s: “We played up in Armand Mandell’s “hall” above his clothing store at 320 Main, and played at the Jungleland at the...
Again Billy the Kid has gained access to the front pages of newspapers. Witness the latest from Gov. Bill Richardson’s office where he (the state) will investigate whether Billy is really buried in Fort Sumner; whether Brushy Bill Roberts is really Billy; whether Sheriff Pat Garrett helped Billy escape the Lincoln County jail. All of this hinges on digging up Billy, Brushy, and Billy’s mother and doing DNA testing. Costs? Why a volunteer in the Lincoln County Sheriff's office will do it all for free. The state will do it fre...
The editor of this paper passed on an e-mail from Mykell Jackman Brewer of Fairfax, Va. She wrote to tell me two things: First, as far back as anyone today can remember, Jackman’s was in business at 310 and then 312 Main and it was her grandfather, William Thurman Jackson who started Jackman’s Mercantile store in Clovis in 1907 as the first “department” store in Clovis. It became Jackman’s Ladies Wear in 1916. W. T. Jackman owned Jackman’s stores in Amarillo, Lubbock, Oklahoma and Clovis. When the stock market crashed in...
About a year-and-a-half ago, Doreen Mondragon of Clovis said she found a stack of old newspapers in the trash behind her apartment. Last month, she brought those papers to this newspaper office in hopes someone might care to keep them. Arrangements have been made to pass them along to Curry County historian Don McAlavy. The papers Mondragon found included several from Clovis High School during the 1959-60 school year. Last week in this space, some of that news was re-reported. The other papers Mondragon found were from Nov....
I had a request from June Edwards Locknane who wanted a column on school sections. Unless you live in the country and farm or ranch you probably wouldn’t know much about them. A school section is land owned by the state and leased to private individuals, with the funds used for public education. Locknane said she always wondered why her father, Murray Edwards, built a home on land he didn’t own. He had built the home on a school section. She asked me about the requirements for leasing a school section. The answer: Anyone can...
Sometime after 3 a.m. on March 30, 1949, Ovida “Cricket” Coogler was killed in Las Cruces. She was 18, stood 5 feet, 4 inches and weighed about 100 pounds. She worked as a waitress. She was called “Cricket” because of the clicking noise made by her spike-heeled shoes as she walked. She was popular. She left her mother’s house saying she had a dinner date, but was last seen extremely drunk and could not even sit on a barstool. Around 3 a.m., a witness saw her opening the door of Jerry “Brusier” Nuzum’s car, in front of the De...
The following military personnel from Curry County were killed or declared missing in action during wartime. Sources are cited. Please contact Editor David Stevens at 763-6991 with any corrections, additions or questions. World War I William Galloway Glen Harris Henry “Tex” Huff Charles Ledbetter Dean Lucas Glen Snodderly Rayne Vivard Charles Williams Charles Wilson Source: Curry County Historian Don McAlavy World War II Bob Anthony Bob Balch Harold W. Barber Lloyd D. Beach Clarence Arless Bell Glen W. Bishop Thomas Bowman Cl...
David Stevens Our newspaper faces potential conflicts of interest almost every day. Our news editor has close family ties with Clovis law enforcement. Two staff members teach in the public schools. Our religion writer is often a guest preacher at area churches. And the editor’s cousin is a controversial figure with the Muleshoe police force. Such conflicts can be a problem when questions come up about a newspaper’s ability to be fair and unbiased in its news coverage. Our staff is too small — and the community is too small...
John Gordon “Spud” Greaves homesteaded southeast of Elida near Nobe in 1907. He was the father of Gordon Greaves, late publisher of the Portales News-Tribune. This is his story: “With the passing of 1908, we had consumed 80 days in water hauling, and decided if we were to remain on the homestead, that we would have to drill a well. Judson Hunter claimed to be a water witch and offered to come over and locate a vein of water.” “The water witch came over with a forked switch off an apple tree to make the survey. About 50...
An event popular in the late 1930s through the mid-’40s would never have happened in more recent times. Once a year, in the late spring, Clovis High School Principal R. E. Marshall would let school out for tree fights in front of the high school building at Seventh and Main. It was dangerous and a lot of students got hurt, but to my knowledge no one ever filed a lawsuit. The object of the game was for one team to take the “fight flag” from the other team. CHS graduate Don Crook first told me about the tree fights. Then a pack...
John Gordon “Spud” Greaves homesteaded southeast of Elida near Nobe in 1907. He was the father of Gordon Greaves, late publisher of the Portales News-Tribune. This is his story: “With the passing of 1908, we had consumed 80 days in water hauling, and decided if we were to remain on the homestead, that we would have to drill a well. Judson Hunter claimed to be a water witch and offered to come over and locate a vein of water.” “The water witch came over with a forked switch off an apple tree to make the survey. About 50...
One of the more exciting unsolved mysteries of all time is about hidden treasure found in New Mexico. Milton E. “Doc” Noss made the discovery in 1937 at Victorio Peak, in the San Andres mountain range of central New Mexico. Noss discovered the treasure site before it was taken in as part of the White Sands Missile Range in the 1940s. This discovery had a Clovis connection: Doc Noss’ wife, Ova, lived and died here. (Terry Delonas is a grandson of Doc and Ova Noss and son of Gus Delonas of the old Busy Bee Cafe in Clovis. Terry...
Events that helped the area... --1901-1907 - The Santa Fe Railway building the 250-mile Belen cut-off from Texico to Belen and founded Clovis. The railroad made possible the great influx of homesteaders from 1903-1912. --1907-present: Clovis created a 5,000-square-mile trade area that became a major factor in our growth. --1909 - The creation of Curry County, with Clovis winning the county-seat site. --1929-31 - The Golden Age of major building in Clovis, and an airfield west of Clovis for 1929 T.A.T. train-plane travel...
In 1949, Hank Williams was all over the radio, as were a dozen cowboy, western and hillbilly singers. A few years later, Elvis Presley came out with his first hit, "That's Alright, Mama," and popular music would never be the same again. Then came Buddy Holly, who in 1957 soft-rocked the world with his first hit, "That'll Be the Day," recorded in a small Clovis recording studio by Norman Petty. Many more hits were to be recorded in Clovis by Buddy Holly, with one backup vocal group being The Roses. One member of that trio,...
Following the end of World War II, the first irrigation wells dug are credited to either N.L. Tharp or L.R. Talley. Along the east side of Curry County and over into Parmer County, Texas, N.L. Tharp farmed. It was said that he, an inventor, fashioned an upside-down truck differential over the well casing and powered the rig with two tractors with belts to the differential. Another farmer, working in the Pleasant Hill area, was L.R. Talley, who always claimed that he was the first man in Curry County to farm with a tractor,...
"From 1931 to 1934 was the driest years I ever saw in New Mexico, and there were a lot of sandstorms," said Lee Merrill, who owns a 10,000-acre ranch in Running Water Draw. "Back then, you could buy all the groceries you could carry for $1.50. During the big drought in 1934, the government had a program to kill cattle as there was no feed to feed them. I sold my entire herd of 78 steers to the government for $18 a head." The droughts and the constant Southwest winds blew fields away and devastated many Curry County farmers....
A decade that has been called Clovis' "Golden Era" saw the population double in a 10-year period, and has not been matched since. The decade got off to a slow start with the early 1920s financial recession and Congress enacting prohibition in 1919, which didn't look good to a lot of people. Even though this decade was called the "Roaring Twenties" because of the so-called "wild life" of a minority of people who drove high-speed cars, danced and drank too much illegal liquor, it just wasn't that way in Clovis or Curry County....
David Calvin Myers and his family stand outside of their home at 123 Prince St. in Clovis in 1916. Photo Courtesy of High Plains Historical Foundation. "The old-time cowmen were a type of which we will never see again. They are as distinct as gold is from silver. They came from the same mold, and this mold was the life they led. Theirs was a simple life ... the life of the pioneer in the great open spaces that was their domain. And in that simple life, they were called upon to make their own path. This called for extreme...
Reading sources on east-central New Mexico, Curry County and Clovis: "Curry County History," 1978, published by the High Plains Historical Foundation of Eastern New Mexico. "High Plains History," 1980, published by the High Plains Historical Foundation of Eastern New Mexico. "Our Kind is Hard to Kill," 1997, by Don McAlavy. "Clovis Revisited - New Perspectives on Paleoindian Adaptations from Blackwater Draw, New Mexico," 1999, by Anthony T. Boldurian and John L. Cotter. "1912 Statehood Days - and other Clovis-Curry County...
