From The Santa Rosa News, November 3, 1939.
So much of New Mexico’s colorful history is revealed to us through our state’s historic newspapers. This article from the Santa Rosa News is not only informative and charming, but elicits the reader to ask more questions. Did the “Old-Timers” agree? Did “shootin’ irons” get used? Did a map get made and are there still copies?
You can research these and many other questions in the New Mexico State Library’s historic newspaper collection. We have thousands of rolls of microfilm of New Mexico newspapers dating from the territorial period of the 1850s to the present. If you aren’t in Santa Fe, the State Library will loan another library up to 3 reels of microfilm per request for 15 days.
Librarians at the New Mexico State Library are also available to help answer your research questions. Get in touch with us at Ask a Librarian or at 505-476-9702.
If the history of cattle trails and ranching in New Mexico is of interest to you or your patrons we recommend Cowboys, Ranching & Cattle Trails: A New Mexico Federal Writers’ Project Book compiled and edited by Ann Lacy and Anne Valley-Fox.
This work along with four others in this WPA Writer’s Project series – Outlaws & Desperados, Frontier Stories, Lost Treasures & Old Mines, and Stories from Hispano New Mexico – can be found in the New Mexico State Library’s Southwest Collection.
Happy researching!