Election Day -- 100 Years Ago

These election delegates posed for this photograph in Hillsboro in 1910.  Missing are the smiles. The men look stern, serious. Elections were and are serious, and the citizens around Hillsboro participated in their share of elections, and produced politicos that shaped the state, like Nicholas Galles and Edward Tittmann. Note the 46-star flag. The New Mexico and Arizona territories were about to enter the Union.  Though not a home-grown Sierra County resident, William "Bull" Andrews, who lived at Andrews, New Mexico, a few miles northeast of Hillsboro, was New Mexico's territorial delegate to Congress in 1910. Andrews was "bullish" in pushing statehood with his Pennsylvanian connections to Senator Matt Quay, for whom Quay County is named.

Happy Hillsboro Halloween

People paid money to see this movie, filmed in Hillsboro in 1970. You can almost taste buttery popcorn and hear the tinny sound coming from the speaker hanging in the car window at the drive-in. Remember those?

We'll leave the movie reviews to others. But know this: the film has some historic value. You'll get glimpses of what Hillsboro looked like 40 years ago. Today's General Store and Country Cafe was the sheriff's office in the flick. You get long looks of the old high school, Union Church, Miller house, and Nunn house, and the courthouse ruin.

And there's a mad man with axe from front of today's Percha Creek Traders' when the place was a hotel. Incidentally someone really was murdered on the street some years ago in front of the place. Bullets and beer didn't mix.

Maybe you'll recognize the home where this scene was filmed. Note the double doors and transom.

Students at New Mexico State University spoofed bits of the movie in 2008. There's a few town and landscape shots that you might recognize.

And if you are so inclined, for $2.99 you can watch the entire movie online. Incidentally, the Hillsboro area would come to host a few other films and TV commercials in the years that followed, and they too will someday have historic value.