Lincoln ~ New Mexico, That Is...

Geocaching friends passed through the ghost town, well, almost ghost town of Lincoln NM recently. One of her photos was very interesting. So when I knew Lincoln NM was on our route between Roswell and Alamogordo, I did some research and convinced Hubby we needed to stop.

Las Placitas del Rio Bonito means "the place by the pretty river." 

This circular stone fortification was erected by the area’s earliest Hispanic settlers in the 1840’s or 1850’s. The tower has a viga-constructed second floor, and an open-roofed second story. It was used as a look out and defensive structure for protection from raiding Apaches. 

Tradition says the Torreón was at the center of a plaza surrounded by a number of jacales. This plaza was part of a series of settlements known as Las Placitas del Rio Bonito.

The Torreón was restored in the mid 1930’s by the WPA under the sponsorship of the Chaves County Historical Society. It became state property in 1935, and is on the National Historic Register and the State Register of Cultural Properties.

description of the Mexican homes surrounding the plaza

interior of the jacal

sticks and wattle home of the early Mexican settlers

one room house

The Lincoln County War was an Old West conflict between rival factions which began in 1878 in New Mexico Territory, the predecessor of the state of New Mexico, and continued until 1881. The feud became famous because of the participation of the criminal William H. Bonney ("Billy the Kid"). Other notable participants included Sheriff William J. Brady, cattle rancher John Chisum, lawyer and businessman Alexander McSween, James Dolan and Lawrence Murphy.

Some of the above mentioned names should be familiar: John Chisum the Cattle King in Roswell and Billy the Kid buried at Fort Sumner.

The conflict began between two factions competing for profits from dry goods and cattle interests in the county. The older, established faction was dominated by James Dolan, who operated a dry goods monopoly through a general store referred to locally as "The House". 

Murphy-Dolan Store

later home of county government and judicial offices

And finally the building and story that originally caught my eye in this historical town...

This is one of Lincoln’s earliest intact dwellings.  The oldest two rooms of this rambling structure were built prior to 1861.  

During the Five-Day Battle in July 1878, a contingent of the McSween faction occupied this building.  Early in the battle, only about 15-20 McSween men were present in the store, and most of the fighting took place further to the west. However, on Wednesday—July 17th—the situation began to deteriorate.  When Isaac’s son Ben Ellis stepped out of the house shortly after dark to feed his mules, he was shot through the neck.  Attempts to bring Dr. Taylor F. Ealy from the Tunstall Store to the Ellis Store were turned back by gunfire.  Ealy was able to treat Ben on the morning of July 18th, and he survived his wound.  Then Colonel Nathan Dudley of Fort Stanton arrived in Lincoln and drove about a dozen McSween men out of the Montano Store about noon on July 19, 1878.  Most of them fled east to the Ellis Store.  When Colonel Dudley then trained his mountain howitzer and Gatling gun on the Ellis Store, all of the McSween men in the east end of Lincoln were forced to leave town.  Thus, the intervention by Colonel Dudley allowed Dolan’s men to focus on the McSween house, which sealed the fate of Alexander McSween.

After being expanded by Elisha Dow in the 1870s, the building was purchased by Isaac Ellis and used thereafter as a boarding house, store and ranch headquarters.  Ironically, Ellis moved to Lincoln County in the summer of 1877 in order to escape the violence of the Colfax County War. 

Do you get the irony? Ellis left Colfax County to escape the county war but by opening a competing story and business in Lincoln, he in fact, was embroiled in the Lincoln County War.

English-born John Tunstall and his business partner Alexander McSween opened a competing store in 1876, with backing from established cattleman John Chisum. The two sides gathered lawmen, businessmen, Tunstall's ranch hands, and criminal gangs to their assistance. The Dolan faction was allied with Lincoln County Sheriff Brady and aided by the Jesse Evans Gang. The Tunstall-McSween faction organized their own posse of armed men, known as the Lincoln County Regulators, and had their own lawmen consisting of town constable Richard M. Brewer and Deputy US Marshal Robert A. Widenmann.

The conflict was marked by revenge killings, starting with the murder of Tunstall by members of the Evans Gang. In revenge for this, the Regulators killed Sheriff Brady and others in a series of incidents. Further killings continued unabated for several months, climaxing in the Battle of Lincoln (1878), a five-day gunfight and siege that resulted in the death of McSween and the scattering of the Regulators.

Pat Garrett was named County Sheriff in 1880, and he hunted down Billy the Kid, killing two other former Regulators in the process. (Sheriff's office was on the second floor of the building.)

Now back to the Ellis Store and the part that caught my interest...

For the next 20 years, the Ellis Store served primarily as a private home.  But in 1901 Dr. James W. Laws came to New Mexico from Memphis, Tennessee, after discovering that he was himself a victim of tuberculosis (then often called the ‘white plague’).  Dr. Law was cured of the disease at Fort Stanton Tuberculosis Hospital by 1904. Inspired by the care he received at Fort Stanton, Dr. Laws bought the Ellis property and expanded the buildings in order to convert it into a sanitarium for patients suffering from tuberculosis.  One of the buildings behind the main house near the river was originally a grist mill located lower on the Rio Bonito.  It was moved here by Dr. Laws and renovated to serve as housing for his nurses.  The patients lived in cottages in order to maximize their exposure to the pure, dry mountain air of southern New Mexico.  Dr. Laws, his wife Grace Austin Laws, and their son Otis Laws operated this small ‘ranch sanitarium’ here from 1905-1918.  They moved to the El Paso area in 1919 to open another sanitarium.

it is now a private residence

La Iglesia de San Juan Bautista, or Church of John the Baptist

built in 1887

The Roman Catholic Church is open to the public 

and is still used for services today. 

Lincoln has numerous (17?) historic structures, nine of which are open to the public as museums operated by New Mexico Historic Sites. These include the Courthouse where Billy the Kid killed deputies James W. Bell and Bob Olinger, the Tunstall Store, the Convento, the Torreon and others.

2010 population census of Lincoln was 189

The village is centered around a 1 mile stretch of U.S. Route 380 (also known as the Billy the Kid Trail, which is the village's only street. Numerous historic structures dating as far back as the late 1800s still remain, many of which have been preserved and now operate as public museums.

Today, Lincoln NM is best known for...

We do not know it the Last Escape of Billy the Kid still happens in August. The pageant grounds were overgrown grass and the bleacher seating looked in need of repair. I will say there were 3 staff members in the Lincoln County Museum when I entered. I did not ask a lot of questions at the time. I maybe should have...

PS: The stop in Lincoln yielded 4 geocaches!