ARTICLE: Americana: Is New Mexico the Nuttiest Place on Earth?

Cowboys, desert, missiles, rib-eyes, aliens, John Wayne and a giant pistachio nut.

I’m back on my Americana kick today. I saw one of my readers at Chalke History Festival this weekend and she was still cringing about guillotining, so sorry Mary, here’s one keeping it light. Last time we looked at whimsical tales of Montana, and this time we’re going to the opposite end of the country to New Mexico, which I was fortunate enough to see in lots of its most bonkers glory on a road trip with my best mate. Here are just a few bits of NM history we discovered on the road…

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A war over steak, sort of…

Who goes to war over cows? The answer is John Simpson Chisum. Born in Tennessee in 1824, he was one of the first ranchers to send his cattle into New Mexico, for sale to the army and to miners in Colorado, and he pissed a lot of people off by doing so. You might be annoyed if 100,000+ cows turned up in your back yard, especially if you happened to be a smaller rancher or a local Native American along the Pecos River, whose livelihood was now in peril thanks to Chisum’s Jinglebob Ranch. The Pecos War of 1876-77 ended in a stalemate, with Chisum escaping charges of rioting, larceny and being a general pain in the arse.

A statue dedicated to Chisum at Roswell, New Mexico

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Simmering friction led to another spat called the Lincoln County War in 1878. This time Chisum went to war alongside other established businessmen, lawmen and criminal gangs. Their muscle came in the form of the Lincoln County Regulators, and they were pitted against entities as the Jesse Evans Gang, the Seven Rivers Warriors and the John Kinney Gang. This time they were not only fighting over where to put the cows, but also over who had the right to own the local equivalent of a 7-Eleven.

This feud got so ridiculous, that when Lew Wallace (author of Ben Hur) arrived to take over as the territorial governor he tried to proclaimed an amnesty… which brings me on to one of those on Chasm’s side of this nonsense…

Billy the Kid

Fighting for Chisum and his faction was one Henry McCarty, alias William Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid. New Mexico loves reminding you that he was once a resident.