Eastern New Mexico Ramble

Back in June, my friend, Alan, and I headed east from Albuquerque on I-40 to ramble around eastern New Mexico -- a part of the state we'd never visited or photographed before.

The first day we went from Tucumcari and San Jon to Clovis via back roads and small towns like House, Grady, Wheatland, and McAlister (mostly intersections with a few houses, a cemetery, and maybe a post office or a school).  After overnight in Clovis (population about 38,000), we headed back west along U.S. highway 60 through Taiban and Yeso to Fort Sumner and Vaughn.

Eastern New Mexico is geographically and politically a westward extension of the Texas panhandle:  wide open spaces, predominately rural/agricultural, and Republican.

The wide open spaces are also dotted with hundreds of giant windmills harvesting kinetic energy from the steady breezes that blow across the plains . . .

And no matter where you are, every fifteen minutes or so you can see or hear BNSF freight trains with 80 - 100 cars running east-west.

Aside from the trains and tracks, the wide open spaces weren't very interesting for photography, but at the human scale there were plenty of opportunities -- primarily cemeteries and abandoned buildings.

Most cemeteries we visited were rural, covering an acre or two . . .

 with a mix of old and new grave markers.

And in all of the cemeteries, there were many beautiful inscriptions and personal remembrance items on graves.

Abandoned, crumbling buildings were the other photographically interesting things on our ramble.

Just across the border between New Mexico and Texas along I-40 is an abandoned gas station.  Which version do you like?

Other abandoned buildings dotted the landscape.

The ghost town of Yeso provided multiple structures.

Outside looking in . . .

. . . inside looking out:

But the pièce de résistance of abandoned buildings was this simple chapel on the edge of what used to be a settlement called Taiban.

It's a favorite of New Mexico photographers, and Alan and I spent 30 minutes photographing the exterior and interior.  I had brought my drone on this trip, and this was the perfect place to use it.

Not surprisingly, the interior was covered with graffiti.

Amid all the spray-painted assertions of presence, there were some wise words:

Westward then to Fort Sumner, NM.  The fort has an ignominious history that most people outside of New Mexico and Arizona have never heard of.  In January, 1864, after a long series of broken treaties and promises by the U.S. government, the U.S. Army, led by Kit Carson and aided by members of the Ute indigenous tribe, attacked the Navajos in their ancestral lands of what is now eastern Arizona.  Carson applied "scorched earth" tactics and forced the Navajos, facing starvation and freezing temperatures, to surrender. 

In the spring of 1864, Carson and the military began removing Navajos from their territory and marched 8,000 - 9,000 of them 300 miles across New Mexico territory to Fort Sumner.  Over 200 Navajos died en route.  They were interned in an area called Bosque Redondo ("round forest") near Fort Sumner for four years before being allowed to return to their homelands in 1868.  If you want to read a more detailed (and harrowing) account of the Navajo Long Walk, click here.  The Bosque Redondo monument and visitor center were closed when we arrived, so I have no photos of them. 

Fort Sumner's other claim to fame is the grave of Billy the Kid.  Fort Sumner was abandoned in 1869, and the property was purchased by rancher and cattle baron Lucien Maxwell, who at one time was the owner of the largest tract of land held by a single individual in the United States (over 1.7 million acres in northeastern New Mexico and southern Colorado).  He retired to Fort Sumner, and died in 1875.  His son, Pete, remained on the property, and in July, 1881, Henry McCarty -- aka William "Billy the Kid" Bonney -- showed up at the Maxwell house, unaware that Lincoln County Sheriff Pat Garrett was waiting for him there.  Garrett fired twice, killing Bonney.

Billy the Kid is now a folk hero of sorts, but he was no angel.  In his 21 years he is alleged to have killed 21 men.  His grave and tombstone are in the Fort Sumner Cemetery outside the present-day town of Fort Sumner.  The cemetery was open, and we took the obligatory photos of the marker, which has an interesting history of its own (which you can read about here).  Billy the Kid and his grave marker remain appropriately behind bars.

We wrapped up our ramble with a delicious late lunch at Penny's Diner in Vaughn, NM, then headed home to Corrales.

If you would like to see these and other images from our trip in a larger format, please visit my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.

Enjoy!