Remnants of Santa Fe project remain

Editor’s note: This is the conclusion of a two-part series on the Santa Fe Heights housing project that began in Clovis in the 1940s. Part one was published Dec. 3.

“My brother and I,” said Cameron Mactavish, “had part-time work at the Santa Fe Heights project when out of school. Andrew was the youngest brother. Occupants came and went and it was normal to do a complete interior paint job, repair the roofs, and try to fix the chuck holes in the paved roads.

“Henry Thomas, a railroad occupant with a wife and three daughters and a son, took great delight in teaching us boys how to throw curve balls. He would conduct clinics for us aspiring pitchers. He had his own catcher’s mitt as I recall. In those days there were no organized baseball teams for the youths.

“The initial project — called War Housing Project — included 140 dwelling units consisting of one, two and three bedrooms, a bath with shower, and a kitchen with walk-in pantry and a living room. Heat was from a natural-gas-fired space heater in the living room. The architects were W. C. Kruger & Associates of Albuquerque.

“After World War II ended, 20 dwelling units were moved in from Dalhart, Texas. At the end of the war, all construction stopped. The community room at the office complex had not been completed. It wasn’t until the Housing Authority of Clovis (HAC) was in place that construction was completed. On Oct. 1, 1946, the project was leased to HAC. Then the housing was rented initially to veterans and later to low-income families.”

On June 20, 1954, the Clovis board of education entered bids for the purchase of the Santa Fe Heights community building for classrooms and for storing maintenance supplies. This surplus building was to be acquired from the U.S. Surplus Property Division with help from the New Mexico State Department of Education.

Jack Stagner, local home builder, on June 20, 1954, advertised in the Clovis News Journal an “open house” for the public to visit his homes — all with flat roofs — in the Triangle Division at the west end of West Seventh Street and the Stagner Addition, which abutted Tierra Blanca at the north end of Clovis on both sides of Main Street.

Many occupants of the SF Heights purchased the homes, which sold for $7,000 to $9,000, depending on the number of bedrooms. Thus the end of the SF Heights was in 1954.

The government meant for the federally financed war housing to be temporary and units were initially planned to be moved after the war.

“The temporary nature of this housing is also planned to forestall effects of possible overbuilding during the war years,” reported Preston L. Wright. In May of 1944, Wright said the Clovis war housing program was providing accommodations for 1,295 persons and these didn’t include the people who lived in the housing units built after this date.

Many Clovisites today still remember living there.

About three of those apartment homes at SF Heights were still there in 1957. Some were moved to the new Clovis High School on Thornton in 1956-57 for use as temporary classrooms. Then at the north end of Thornton Street, the Wright Addition (T. E. Wright, original owner) had some of the apartment buildings moved there, some to be rebuilt, stuccoed and made into homes. Some of the old apartment buildings can still be seen at North Thornton and Wright Street.

In 1958, a privately owned addition, called the Westbook Addition, replaced the old Santa Fe Heights.

I would like to thank those who helped gather facts for this story: Cameron Mactavish, Joye Myers, George and Betty Hicks, Charlotte McMurtry Howell, Peggy and Wanda Thomas, Wayne Kilgore, Joy Giles Williams, Gen Williams, Tom Pendergrass, Coni Jo and Tim Lyman at the courthouse, Jim Burns Agency, J. E. “Red” Johnson, and Harold Kilmer.

Don McAlavy is Curry County’s historian.