Historic Weather Then and Now

The winter of 2011 will go down in history as the coldest on record--one not likely to be broken for some time. Early February 2011 saw the coldest temperatures ever documented across New Mexico: 34 below zero near Edgewood; 28 below at Taos; and 10 below at Hillsboro.

Cecil Boyd tows a car after a 1918 storm. Tom Ying's restaurant is in the background, the present-day Black Range Museum. Photo Black Range Musuem

According to Reverend Russ Bowen, the official National Weather Service record-keeper for Hillsboro, he documented 10 below on February 3, the lowest temperature since record-keeping started in Hillsboro. Bowen who pastors at the Union Church and has a college degree in meteorology, says that weather records for Hillsboro date to the 1890s, but they were taken sporadically. The record-keeping improved in the 1920s, particularly related to precipitation.  But in 1954, Hillsboro resident, the late Roy Schoenradt, kept a full complement of records in earnest: precipation, highs and lows, dew point, wind and so forth. Schoenradt kept the official National Weather Service records until his death in the 1990s, when his son John took over for a short spell.  Bowen has been the record-keeper since.

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." --Herodotus
Photo Black Range Museum

The freeze of 1971 had been the coldest of cold spells for Hillsboro. Bowen says that the low for that event was +1 degree for a low -- 11 degrees warmer than this latest historic event.

Bad weather has visited upon Hillsboro many times, and it was usually floods making headlines. But snow and cold have laid a pallor over town a time or two.  -- Craig Springer

February 1, 1896 - Remembering the Fountain Murders

Today marks the 115th anniversary of the murder of young Henry Fountain and his dad, Judge Albert J. Fountain. After securing indictments on Oliver Lee and his acolytes at the Lincoln County Courthouse for stealing cattle, Albert and his eight-year-old son, Henry Fountain, headed back home to Mesilla. They never arrived.

Henry Fountain was murdered at age eight, February 1, 1896

From all the blood and the signs of a struggle at Chalk Hill near present-day White Sands National Monument, they were presumed murdered. The bodies of Henry and his dad were never found.

After three years of evading authorities, and deft political maneuvering by Albert Bacon Fall, Oliver Lee and Jim Gililland came to trial, accused of murdering the boy. Knowing that public opinion was not in their favor in Las Cruces, the defense sought a change of venue -- to Hillsboro.

The trial in May of 1899 would be the most sensational event the town of Hillsboro would ever see, perhaps save for twice being occupied by federal troops during the Apache wars. After a three-week trial that made headlines in newspapers across the country, Lee and Gililland were acquitted. The prosecution faltered from the start; key witnesses didn't show up.

Some historians say they got away with murder. Others reason that the Territory tried the wrong men. The lens of time doesn't bode well for Lee and Gililland and Fall. Apologists for Lee cite the code of the times, where a man that needed killing got killed. Albert Fountain had a way of bringing out the hate in his enemies. Henry, we need to remember, was eight years old. No one ever stood trial for the murder of Albert Fountain.

Many good books have been written about these historic events that culminated in a stately Victorian brick courthouse on the rise above Hillsboro. Murder on the White Sands by Corey Recko is the most recent. History professor, Gordon Owen wrote, The Two Alberts: Fountain and Fall. C.L. Sonnichsen's Tularosa: Last of the Frontier West is a classic. Former territorial governor, George Curry, wrote about his personal experience in the matter late in his life from his home in Kingston in, George Curry, 1861-1947: An Autobiography.

Murder on the White Sands is the most recent book about the Fountain murders. Recko takes the reader through the disappearance and the trial, and offers analysis.

You can also visit Oliver Lee Memorial State Park .

Ninette Miller: Hillsboro Artist

Artist Ninette Stocker Miller smokes a cigarette as she looks on at a Bengal tiger that she painted in her Hillsboro home. Ninette studied drawing at the New England Conservatory in Boston in 1887, before she moved to Hillsboro.

You can still see the creation at the General Store Cafe on main street. It's on the west wall, near the back of the cafe. This image was taken by her husband, George T. Miller before he died in 1909. She owned the store until her death in 1949.

Ninette Stocker Miller, artist, druggist, Hillsboro postmistress. Photo Black Range Museum

Here's a younger Ninette, taking aim, taken near her home in Minnesota. Like nearly all early Hillsboro residents, mining brought George T. and Ninette Stocker-Miller out west. George was employed by his father-in-law, Henry Davis Stocker, VP of Standard Gold Mining Company, based in Minneapolis.

Ninette Stocker lays a side-by-side over a tree stump, probably taken in Minnesota. Photo courtesy Pam Thompson

Baseball in Hillsboro

Hillsboro fielded teams over the years, going by the Sierra Browns and later, the Hillsboro Grays. Teams visited from Albuquerque, Roswell, and Silver City.  Even the New Mexico State University Aggies (then called State College) visited in March 1908.The school paper, The Round Up, in some fine sports reporting by a student, chronicled the train ride to Lake Valley, and the stage coach ride the last 15 miles to Hillsboro. The Sierra Browns traveled to Las Cruces, or should we say, College Station, to play a second game in April. The Aggies won both games. The Round Up archives are searchable, here, offering a wonderful look at college life in years past. http://libcgi.nmsu.edu:8080/RoundUp/jsp/index.jsp

The Sierra Browns, as they may have looked when the NMSU Aggies visited in 1908, by stage coach. Black Range Museum

There's no color barrier on this 1931 Hillsboro Grays team. These guys were champs, so says the back of the photo, taken at Hurley, NM. Black Range Museum

Who's who, on the 1931 Hillsboro Grays championship team. Black Range Museum

This is what's left of the Hillsboro home field in 2010. The backstop's steel poles rust on the mesa south of Hillsboro, with the Black Range rising in the west. Craig Springer photo.

Court House Post Card

Today you'd email the news, text it, or make a phone call.  In March of 1909, George T. Miller wrote this card to Hillsboro politico, Mr. Disinger, then in San Diego, informing him that the Sierra County seat was moving to Cutter, on the Santa Fe Railroad.  But George Miller had it wrong! Territorial governor (and future Kingston resident) George Curry wouldn't go for it. In Curry's autobiography, he cites that the elected representative, Julian Chaves, had marshaled the bill through the territorial legislature without support of the people, citing a strong desire by a select few to sell town lots at Cutter as the motivation for the bill. Cutter was also associated with a mining fraud, and perhaps at most was populated by 25 people. Hillsboro still had about 1,000 residents. Despite George Miller's assertion, it did not become law. This card has more to say, beneath its black ink. The photo was taken by George T. Miller, and the postcard probably sold in his drug store. He would die just a few months after writing this card, leaving wife Ninette Miller to run the drugstore and take over as postmistress. Representative Chaves would move from his house next door to the Union Church (Miller lived on the other side of the church), to Albuquerque and pass away in five years. Courtesy Black Range Museum.

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.

Camp Boyd ca 1885

Here's another look at Camp Boyd (aka Camp Hillsboro) taken between 1885 and 1886. The military were stationed at Hillsboro to protect the town from depredation by Apaches. Photo courtest Matti Nunn

The 8th Cavalry or ROTC?

"The most stately building in the Territory," as the old Sierra County Courthouse was once called, stands on the hill behind this military encampment. That dates this photo as post-1892, when courthouse was built. Is this an ROTC camp from New Mexico A&M (present-day NMSU) 70 miles to the south, or is this U.S. Cavalry? The Apache Indian threat was much reduced by the 1890s.  George Albion Miller, who was born in the home behind the tree near the courthouse in 1905, was an engineering student at A&M,was in ROTC, and did own a camera, we know. Photo courtesy Matti and Patti Nunn

Camp Boyd aka Camp Hillsboro 1885

U.S. Cavalry were encamped at Hillsboro for about a year, from 1885 to 1886. This image shows men in formation, near the present site of the Cunningham ranch in Percha Creek. Photo courtesy Matti Nunn.

Correspondence conducted at Camp Boyd are housed at the National Archives and Records Center.
 http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc/action/ExternalIdSearch?id=606855&jScript=true