The oldest building in the locality is the one-room, stone
structure which was erected sometime before 1888 to house the
office of the Eddy-Bissell Cattle Company. In 1991 the building
was moved to a city park.
"It is within the range of possibilities that the whistle of a locomotive will be heard within the Pecos Valley...."
"Carlsbad is an emerald green jewel nestled in the Pecos Valley. This city is known for having more parks and recreational facilities than any other in the state."
THE SITE
In the 1870s a "last frontier" in sparsely-settled southeastern
New Mexico was awaiting conquest. William A. Keleher in Albuquerque
described that Pecos River country as land having "a matchless
beauty of grassy meadows bright with colors of wildflowers."
Later, Curtis C. Wynne, a resident of Carlsbad, who viewed the
valley from a different perspective, wrote that it was "virtually
a barren desert, rugged with mesquite and cactus." Other
observers described great areas of grama grass, abounding in buffalo
and a variety of wild game.
The records showed that the summers were rather warm Temperatures
averaged about 95 degrees in the daytime and rising above 100
on thirty days, but with cool nights due to the altitude. Most
days autumn and spring were found to be delightful, and even in
winters the temperatures normally were not extreme. Altogether,
the usually temperate climate, the low humidity, and the abundant
sunshine were soon recognized as pleasant habitat. However, that
rosy summation overlooked those few occasions when high winds
uprooted trees and turned into duststorms which darkened the sky
for hours at a time.
Before the modern invasion occurred other people had been here.
The first, in about 25,000 B. C., were representatives of Sandia
Man, who were nomadic hunters. Other nomadic peoples followed
until in the era from 900 to 1350 A. D. relatively sedentary basket
makers resided in caves and pit houses west of the Pecos River
while cultivating their fields and hunting game. Next the nomadic
Apaches came down from the north and subsisted by hunting buffalo.
Then came explorers of European extraction. First was Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca and three companions, who were shipwrecked on the coast of Florida in 1527, and in their westward trek they traveled up along the Pecos River past the site of future Carlsbad and then into northwestern New Spain (Mexico) in 1535. His glowing report encouraged some friars to come up from New Spain to an Indian pueblo near present Bernalillo. A wealthy Spaniard, Antonio Espejo, then went to rescue them, and after learning that they had been killed, he and his party explored to the east and west and finally returned to New Spain by way of the valley of the Pecos River. Next, in 1590, some would-be colonists were led up the valley by Castano de Sosa. Since his expedition lacked official authorization, Captain Juan Marlete was sent up the Pecos to arrest him and force his return.
After that Spanish control weakened and was lost to Mexico when that nation became independent of Spain in 1821. By conquest the United States superseded Mexico in 1846 to 1848 and created the Territory of New Mexico two years later.
Carlsbad Lake is in the widened bed of the Pecos River, and
Riverside Park is shown on the left, as viewed in 1990 from the
Bataan Memorial Bridge, built in 1941.
After the Civil War cattlemen in Texas began making long drives
of herds for sale at forts in New Mexico and Colorado. The trail
from western Texas, came up along the Pecos River to a fording
place for crossing the river northward where it now intersects
Guadalupe Street in Carlsbad. The first drovers were Charles Goodnight
and Oliver Loving in 1866, with 1,600 head. After them the principal
drover was John S. Chisum, who within a few years brought north
an estimated 100,000 head for sale.
Drovers who observed that they had been driving herds right through
good cow county began building adobe cabins and settling down
to become pioneer ranchers. Lily (Casey) Klasner, who came as
a girl to a ranch on the Rio Hondo in 1866, wrote that she knew
of seven men who had settled in scattered locations . According
to Francis G. Tracy, a pioneer resident, there were nineteen of
those cow camps before the village named "Eddy" was
founded in 1888 to 1889. A propitious location was in the vicinity
of Seven Rivers north of the future site of Carlsbad. It was so
named because seven small streams merged there before flowing
into the Pecos River. Among those near that site was Charles E.
Eddy. He, with his brother and with backing by a New York banker,
began developing the Eddy-Bissell Ranch there in 1881.
Since cow camps created a market for stores, one of the early
ranchers built an adobe trading post near Seven Rivers in 1867,
and ten families arrived there in wagon trains in 1880. Three
years later it had a post office, two stores, two saloons, and
a blacksmith shop. In that year a similar trading post, named
"lookout," was started near Black River, and a year
later pioneers founded an agricultural community at Hope, twenty-one
miles west of the site of present Artesia. It continued in existence,
whereas Seven Rivers and lookout, after attaining population of
800 and 350, died in the 1890s when the town of Eddy, predecessor
of Carlsbad, was growing into prominence.
In 1887, Charles B. Eddy, then residing on his ranch, envisioned
a project fed by the Pecos River for irrigation along a canal
named, "Halagueno" (Alluring), to be dug along the east
side of the river southward to "La Huerta" (The Garden)
on the heights north of the bend in that river at the future site
of Carlsbad. He formed a corporation and began soliciting investments.
A year later Patrick F. Garrett, a former lawman who resided on
a ranch near Roswell, also envisioned a project to be called,
"The Great Northern Canal," which might be extended
southward for irrigation of up to 40,000 acres. Then he teamed
up with Eddy, and they enlisted the collaboration of Charles W.
Greene, a clever promoter. Together they founded a new corporation
and planned projects for the entire valley from Roswell south
to the Texas boundary.
In 1888 the promoters found that a man with a caravan of prairie
schooners already was encamped on a site which was suitable for
a headquarters. He was Robert Weems Tansill of Chicago, a wealthy
manufacturer of five-cent cigars. Together they employed B. A.
Nymeyer to make a survey and prepare a plat of lots to be sold
for $50.00 each. Tansill insisted that the town be named "Eddy,"
and Greene's daughter Lillian so christened it by cracking open
a bottle of champagne at the Guadalupe fording place.
A large concrete flume built in 1902-1903 still carries water
for irrigation into the city and beyond
The promoters still lacked the means to complete their ambitious plans. Eddy appealed to Tansill, who then resided in Colorado Springs, and he introduced Eddy to James John Hagerman, a wealthy, semi-retired industrialist. In response to Eddy' s invitation, he traveled by train to Toyah in western Texas. Eddy took him up the valley in a buggy to point out the prospects for agriculture by irrigation. Hagerman then took charge, formed the new investment and improvement Company, raised some capital, and invested heavily himself. By 1890, the Avalon Dam had been built north of the village, and then water was released into a long main canal. A high, trestle-supported flume was built to carry a branch of the ditch over the river from to Huerta for irrigation in the town and beyond.
Eddy continued as manager until he fell out with Hagerman and
moved to El Paso in 1895. Greene went to England, where he interested
Swiss and Italian families in migrating to farms on the project.
Tansill developed a small model farm south of the town, advanced
loans to help newcomers get started, and moved to La Huerta. In
addition, Hagerman formed a separate company to build the Pecos
Pacific at Pecos, Texas, and in 1891 the townsmen celebrated the
arrival of the first train in Eddy . Hagerman then resided in
a large home he had built on property east of Eddy. Next, he went
in deeper with investments in order to obtain extension of the
line to Roswell and Amarillo, where it became a branch of the
Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad in 1900.
The former passenger depot of Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad once had much use. It's central portion was built in 1916.
When the territorial legislature had delineated Eddy County in
1889 the assumption was that the count seat would be Seven Rivers,
then the largest settlement. However, by the time of the election
of county commissioners in 1890 the village of Eddy was a competitor,
and in a referendum it won by a vote of 331 to 83. In that year
the census takers had counted only 278 persons in Eddy, and in
that referendum they cast 241 of the votes! The result called
for the building of a courthouse, for which Charles B. Eddy donated
an entire town block. The commissioners let a contract for $30,000
for erecting a brick building, which had to be enlarged in 1914
at a cost of $170,000. In 1938 to 1939 it was remodeled and enlarged
into an attractive stuccoed building in the pueblo style.
The Eddy County Courthouse and its shaded lawn occupy a city
block.
In the flurry of activity in the early 1890s the farmers were growing a variety of crops, although their experimentation with peach orchards ultimately proved to be disastrous. The early boom collapsed when hard times were induced by the Panic of 1893, and simultaneously a bad flooding of the Pecos River played havoc with the irrigation ditches, undermined the railroad tracks, and washed out the Avalon Dam and the Hagerman Dam in town, which when rebuilt was renamed, "The Tansill Dam." Most of the pioneer farmers moved away, and Hagerman had to declare the irrigation company bankrupt in 1898. His personal losses amounted to about two million dollars. Thus about the only activity in the mid-1890s was the arrival of hundreds of tubercular patients seeking the benefit of residence out-of-doors in the semi-arid climate. So many lived in tents that far a while, as an observer remarked, "The countryside looked like an Army camp."
Incidentally, that Tansill Dam backed up the river to form Carlsbad
Lake, which extended in the widened river-bed for over a mile
above the dam.
At the end of Tansill Dam is the building of a youth center,
which formerly was occupied by a power plant.
While in the town everything had come to a standstill in the mid-1890s,
ranching was experiencing expansion. After the arrival of the
railroad in 1891 extensive grazing of sheep began, and the first
carload of wool was shipped In 1894. By 1914 there were 66,845
sheep in the county. Also, more land grants for ranching were
taken up, so that by 1898 cattle for marketing were filling 400
freight cars each week. By 1914 the cattle in the county numbered
66,287 head.
Meanwhile, Tansill had sponsored a change in the name of the town. it had been incorporated as "Eddy" in 1893, and Tansill urged a change to "Carlsbad" in 1899. The purpose was to emphasize the water flowing from a mineral spring which had already acquired the name "Carlsbad Mineral Spring." In a referendum the change carried by a vote of 83 t a 43. Then Tansill supervised preparation for building a new concrete flume across the river, which was finished in 1903, a year after his death, That flume won renown as "one of the largest of its kind in the world."
The irrigation system was barely operational again when another flood wrecked it in 1904. In desperation, the officers of the company negotiated a sale to the United State Bureau of Reclamation in 1905 for $150,000, or only about ten cents for each dollar of original investment. 1907 the system was made fully operational again for ultimate irrigation of 30,000 acres by means of 145 miles of ditches. Then more and more fields were planted in alfalfa.
Francis G. Tracy and C. H. McLenathen were finding that with irrigation cotton could be grown profitably. By 1918 it had become the major cash crop, grossing a half million dollars in that year.
Because the irrigation system is the largest built originally
by private enterprise, it was declared a National Landmark in
1973.
The first permanent building in the Town of Eddy, now Carlsbad,
has been occupied continuously by the office of the irrigation
company.
Where there had been only one small, frame building for the office of the company in 1888, there were eleven business buildings a year later and 250 homes by 1905. Notable among the buildings was the first permanent structure erected in 1890, to house the Eddy National Bank and the offices of the Pecos Valley Railroad and the Improvement Company. Also, the mercantile Joyce-Pruitt Company, founded in 1888. soon expanded extensively. Hagerman built a hotel in 1890 and Tansill another in 1892. In that year the business men organized the Eddy Club, which evolved into the Chamber of Commerce in 1930.
The earliest easy crossing of the river was provided by the building of the first, wooden Greene Street Bridge in 1890. A small power plant added at one end of the Hagerman Dam in 1893 was replaced in 1925 by a larger building. For a few years after 1893 an ice factory was in operation, and from 1899 to 1903, a beet sugar factory.
After the first automobile was acquired by Dr. Frederick F. Doepp in 1905, their increase in numbers led to the opening of three garages in 1915 and the first drive-in service station in the state in 1920.
The first airplane seen locally was an Army craft that landed
in an alfalfa field in 1918. Eight years later the City acquired
a landing field, which was improved greatly in 1942 for military
use.
Meanwhile the publication of a newspaper, The Argus, had begun
in 1889, and another, The Current, in 1891. After they merged
in 1926, the new publication has out lasted its competitors.
Because Charles B. Eddy had required that the deed for each lot in the town should contain a provision that no liquor could be sold on the premises, in 1892 B. A. Nymeyer laid out a district nearby where saloons could be located, and they soon became also houses of prostitution and gambling dens. It was called, " Phenix," and the location was across the road from the later site of the Stevens Motel. As that was out in the county, the town government organized in 1893 was unable to eradicate that blight.
Apparently some townsmen attempted to cauterize that sore spot, because there were several fires in Phenix. Citizens, headed by C. H. McLenathen, obtained the appointment of Daniel R. "Dee" Harkey as U. S. Marshal for that task. He deputized ten others, and they raided the dens and arrested several prostitutes. As a result, in 1895 one of the gambling proprietors, Ed Lyle, and sixteen of the remaining prostitutes rode in wagons in a parade through the town as they were departing far a new stand in Globe, Arizona. After that the saloon was allowed to continue in business until 1918.
Meanwhile, in 1894 occurred a memorable public hanging of a murderer.
Otherwise order prevailed, with only occasional minor deviations.
Charles William Lewis, Jr., has written that "burglaries
and vandalism were unheard of." As summed up by Francis G.
Tracy, "The town was too busy to be bad." Incidentally,
the town was proclaimed a "city" in 1918.
A community has to have protection against fires. In the early
1890s, as related by Mrs. Flora M. Ryan, when a fire broke out
people fired pistols and rang church bells. Then "Everyone
rushed to the scene and formed a bucket brigade." in 1893
volunteers formed a fire company and obtained two hand-drawn hose
carts. In 1890 the town built a combined fire station and town
hall on South Canyon Street. Next, in 1918 the Fire Department
obtained a car with chemical tanks mounted on it, and then professional
firemen were employed. A Seagrave fire truck was purchased in
1923.
Another hazard was the frequent flooding of the Pecos River, After the first damaging flood in 1893 the towns men organized relay riders to bring a warning to town, and then, according to Mrs. Ryan, "People would grab a little food, jump into their wagons, and race for the west hills.,.." Years later more effective protection was provided by the building of Brantley Dam upstream, on which work began in 1984.
Another project launched at first for service in emergencies was
the enrolling of men in Company B of the National Guard in 1909,
then commanded by Etienne Bujac. Unexpected assignments took them
far, first to the Mexican Border when the U. S. Army was trying
to find, and punish, Pancho Villa for his raid on Columbus, New
Mexico, in 1916. Within a month after being called home from that
assignment (in March of 1917) it was mustered into the federal
service with the 40th Brigade, which was sent to France at a critical
time during World War I. Then in 1919 the returning young veterans
founded a post of the American Legion, which they named after
their only casualty, Bryan Blodgett.
The pioneer townsmen promptly founded institutions in the American pattern. For religious services the Grace Episcopal Mission was first, in April of 1889. Then Charles B. Eddy donated two town lots, on which a building was ready for dedication in March of 1892. For that event, when the bishop and a companion were traveling from the depot in Toyah, Texas, on a primitive road northward, they got lost and spent two days on the desert before finding their way into the village of Eddy.
The Methodists, Baptists, and Catholics organized in 1890 and
had buildings in 1892, 1893, and 1893, respectively. in 1894 the
Presbyterians began assembling for worship, and two years later
they moved into a small frame building, which they replaced 1929.
Meanwhile, in 1912, the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church was
founded, and thenceforth others were added until by 1989 the newspaper
directory was regularly listing about three dozen.
Parents also persisted in efforts to have opportunities for education of their children. In response, the Pecos Valley Town Company built the Adobe School in 1889, and since it immediately became overcrowded, they had the Stone School erected that fall. Within two years those buildings could not hold all 252 pupils, so the Brick School was added on lots donated by Charles B. Eddy.
After the turn of the century the offering of courses at the secondary
level enabled the graduation of the first high school class of
two girls in 1904, and the first high school building was erected
in 1908. (The present distinguished high school was built in 1962.)
Further, in 1909 an elementary school was opened by the Sisters
Adorers of Most Precious Blood, who were succeeded by the Franciscan
Sisters in 1916. That order also founded a parochial school in
1923 in San Jose, a southern subdivision of the city.
Urgent need for provision for health care prompted a physician, Dr. H. C. Van Newman, and a dentist, H. B. Keeler, to locate in the town quite early, in 1890, and another physician came in 1897, Dr. Frederick F. Doepp. Another whose services were mentioned through the decades of the 1920s and 1930s was Dr. Amos Smith. Much earlier in the 1890s, Mrs. Josephine Anderson and her husband Lucius began caring for ill persons in their home and then built a two-story adobe sanitarium and maintained it until 1930.
Meanwhile, in 1898 women of the town had incorporated the Eddy
County Hospital Association. For it they first rented a four-room
house unti1 1905, when they acquired a two-story, frame building
in which they crowded ten beds. The next move was in to a thirteen-room
brick building, which was used until 1942. Much earlier, in 1911,
the Sisters Adorers of Most Precious Blood had opened a small
sanitarium, which they enlarged into a general hospital in 1917
and transferred to the Franciscan Sisters in 1923 . The two hospita1s
of present have a background in determined efforts and meritorious
services.
The modern Columbia Medical Center was built in 1977 as a culmination
of earlier provisions for care of ill persons.
Most persons had some leisure time for enjoyment of recreational activities. In the early years they depended much upon their own ingenuity . Some were "fiddlers," and when word of a get-together was passed along, the pioneers came from up to ten or fifteen miles, and "all had a bash," as Ward Shafter put it.
In 1890, Fred Piontkowsky began pursuing his diverse interests. He started a brass band, promoted boxing matches, and helped organize the Eddy Literary and Dramatic Society, which presented local talent in a variety of performances in the Adobe Schoolhouse.
A town baseball team, first fielded In 1896, competed in thrilling
games for a decade with teams of neighboring towns, and fans who
went along sometimes filled special trains . As early as 1908
basketball, even a girls' team, began competition. Further, horse
races, began at the first fairgrounds at Greene and Guadalupe
streets in 1900 Soon it expanded into roping contests, in which
Will Rogers was said to have made his first appearance.
By the 1920s local rodeos were attracting strong competitors, of whom Richard Merchant went on to win national champion ships in 1923 and 1924. In addition, the availability of a waterfront on Carlsbad Lake, right in the city, facilitated the inauguration of popular water carnivals in 1919. Next, in 1926 the American Legion began conducting observances of the Fourth of July, which thrilled thousands of spectators annually.
The large building of the Cavern Theater was once a popular
gathering place for viewing motion pictures.
Technology produced recreational aids, like the gramophone, on which recordings first were played locally in 1892 for audiences in a hall for an admission charge of fifty cents. Subsequently, in the 1920s the radio and motion pictures reached an early peak in their popularity, and in the next decade, the conducting of dances to accompaniment by "juke boxes."
Women fostered what they considered to be a more constructive form of recreation - reading . Several founded the Research Club in 1897, They changed the name to Literary Club when they began raising funds in 1899 to open a reading room in the courthouse. That organization became the Woman's Club in 1904 and soon acquired a two-room, frame building in Halagueno Park, which the town took over in 1908 and moved it to a location on Canal Street.
Finally, in 1930, a bond issue of $26,000 enabled the erection of a new library building in that park, with Mrs. Flora M. Flora as the first, and long-time, librarian.
In 1931 eight interested persons organized the Carlsbad Archeological
and Historical Association, which founded a museum in 1938, at
first on the second floor of the library building. (in 1978 a
large addition was built for the Carlsbad Museum and Art Center.)
By 1990 the Carlsbad Public Library had acquired over 50,000
books.
Throughout three decades surface resources had been utilized by trial and error until the results became fairly advantageous. Then, beginning in the 1920s, the development of underground resources inaugurated a new era in the city and county.
Back in 1902 a cowboy, James L. White, discovered "Bat Caves" in the Guadalupe Mountains twenty-four miles southwest of Carlsbad, but they did not receive much attention until explored, publicized, provided with a stairway, and designated a National Monument in the 1920s, during a boom in tourism. Then visitation increased to a total of 91,462 in 1930. The caves have had a million visitors annually, except in wartime, and made it a boom for to tourist facilities on the way there, which included especially those in Carlsbad.
Meanwhile, oil had been discovered in Eddy County in 1909 and again in 1923, but much market for it had to wait for an increase of use in heating plants and in automotive vehicles. After Martin Yates Jr. brought in a well near Artesia in 1923, so much drilling occurred that by 1938 the southeast corner of the state was "gushing oil" valued then at thirty-two million dollars annually. Although Carlsbad was on the far edge of the oil fields, it already had a head start as a trading center and thus naturally became also a headquarters of some of the companies and workmen engaged in petroleum industries.
Next, in 1925, a geologist, Dr. V. H. McNutt, discovered Potash
while looking for signs of oil twenty-five miles east of the city.
Drilling began in 1929, and refining in 1932. Because World War
II halted the importation of potash from Germany for processing
into fertilizer, production in this field increased to hundreds
of thousands of tons annually. Then Carlsbad became the headquarters
of more companies and employees engaged in mining and related
services. In the words of James Barker, "It turned a sleepy
contented, little cow town into a modern city."
In Riverfront Park stands the first locomotive used to haul
potash in freight cars after refining of it began east of Carlsbad
in 1932
After a small beginning by the 278 persons in the town of Eddy in 1890, the collapse of 1894 was overcome and a modest increase ensued, to 963 in 1900. Then improvements stimulated almost a doubling, to 1,763 in 1910. The stresses of World War I caused a slowing down of growth to 2,205 by 1920.
Despite a nation-wide depression there was a slight boost to 3708
in 1930 and a good gain to 7,048 ten years later. Then a combination
of factors - - ranching, farming, drilling , mining, tourism,
homes for retirees, and institutional development boosted the
count to 25,592 in the Census of 1980.
The citizens of city and county could well celebrate an ultimate success far beyond that even imagined in early times. Some risks were present during each stage of specialization, so that "ups and downs " were bound to occur. Whenever a new form of success was apparent, many participants were jubilant and optimistic. For example, during the transformation which was occurring after the collapse of the mid-1890s,a former resident of the valley, James S. Carter, expressed his fond recollections in 1909 in a poem which he sent from Massachusetts to a newspaper in Roswell. Here is an excerpt from it:
I can see the blooming valleys where irrigation reigns;
I can see the fruit trees swaying in the east winds of the Plains.
There are fields of green alfalfa and cotton snowy white,
And kaffir corn and milo maize on all sides, left and right.
Oh the good old Pecos, much maligned and very queer,
With all your faults I love you and wish that I were near
That I might hear your rumpus as you leap and tear,
Mad because you're harnessed and have to stay right there.
Included here must be a recognition of the community celebration by means of the six-day Pageant of Progress presented by a large local caste in 1963 and again by an appropriate observance of the Centennial in 1989. At that time among the articles in a 138-page publication, Our Town, issued by the Current-Argus, a tribute to the pioneers was expressed throughout it and summed up by Mrs. Flora M. Ryan, as follows:
Here was an untouched land, which they would stamp with
their civilization, mold with their skill and industry. All
the settlers seemed to feel that they had a sacred trust
to make something fine and wonderful here.