| New Site | Old Home | Search | Communities | Counties | Southeast | Southwest | |
 |
| |
| ||||||||||||
Curry County Guide
Last updated on Thursday, February 20, 2003
Though it has a small sign to indicate its location, Pleasant Hill no longer has a post office.
Located on NM 77, only one mile from the Texas border in Curry County, it was organized in 1910. Originally it was a part of two ranches, the Brown and Shenault. Lee Barnes was fond of Pleasant Hill, Texas, and suggested that name at a meeting of local residents. During the early part of the 20th Century, this section of New Mexico was settled with hopeful homesteaders who sometimes paid only 10 cents an acre for land. Ranching is still the economic base.
The Cultural Arts Series at Clovis Community College in Clovis, New Mexico begins its sixth year of “Bringing the World to You.” This year’s theme, “Connections” focuses on our desire to connect audiences with the arts through world class performances and important educational outreach.
Appearing: Sophie Milman, The Lovell Sisters, Davide Cabassi, Dervish, Pueblo Christmas with Robert Mirabal, Christmas from Dublin, George Winston, Viver Brasil Dance Company, Glenn Miller Orchestra, The Spencers - Theatre of Illusion, Santa Fe Opera Performers, and a Cinco de Mayo celebration.
The city's history goes back thousands of years earlier to the "Clovis Culture." In 1932, A. W. Anderson of Clovis first discovered evidence of human occupation about 11,000 years ago at the Blackwater Draw site. Now the Blackwater Draw Museum presents evidence of the remarkable "fluted" points (a New World invention) and other stone and bone weapons. They occur in association with extinct Pleistocene age megafauna such as mammoth, ancient bison, horse and large turtles. Recovered bones of these mastodon are also on display. A state museum, it is under the direction of Eastern New Mexico University at Portales and is located 12 miles southwest of Clovis on U. S. Highway 70.These six settlements lie within a 100 mile area, although few and far between. The Llano Estacado, the Staked Plains, beckoned many people to come west and homestead in the early years of the 20th century.
Little remains of Field, created by the consolidation of three rural schools. Located at the junction of NM 288 and 224, it isn't even indicated on the most recent map of New Mexico. The post office existed until 1924, but the mail now goes to Melrose.
SouthernNewMexico carries listings of the finest homes for sale in Clovis, New Mexico.
View Listings of Clovis, NM Real Estate.
It’s my first night in Clovis, New Mexico, and there’s a storm brewing outside. How appropriate, since there’s one brewing in my head as well. My husband and my six-month old son and I have just arrived here, after driving from Las Vegas, Nevada. I’m tired, cranky, and already beginning to panic, even though we have been in this town less than three hours. But as the sun sets on this attractive, high-plains community of approximately 35,000, and the wind begins to blow, rustling the leaves on the old oak tree out front, I feel my spirits rise. In my mind there is no problem that a good storm, particularly a thunderstorm, can’t cure. And in Clovis, in the summer, thunderstorms can be a regular occurrence.Melrose, at 4,599 elevation and a population of 877, is a viable town, 18 miles east of Tolar. However, it was known as Brownhorn in 1882 because it was located between the Brown and Horn ranches. When repair shops were built for the Santa Fe Railroad, its officials named the town Melrose - supposedly after Melrose, Ohio.
Ranching is the economic mainstay of this region, with its sprinkler farming and livestock grazing. Cannon Air Force Base, 21 miles to the east, uses the Melrose Bombing Range for practice bombing and strafing. St. Vrain is eight miles further along Route 60, and came into being in 1907. The community, though small, believes the town was named for the early guide and explorer Ceran St. Vrain. He was also a Colonel in the First New Mexico Volunteer Infantry. All that remains of Grier, five miles from St. Vrain, is a grain elevator and a few houses. Another of the farming communities that sprang up overnight when the railroad was being constructed, it had a post office from 1921 to 1956.
At one time a vaudeville house, the Lyceum in Clovis was built in 1919 and 1920, and like the Luna and El Raton has space for commercial businesses on either side of its theater entrance. Its stage now extends forward from the proscenium, covering the former orchestra pit. A fly-tower holds the theater’s original stage curtain.
During its peak years of 1920-1940, the Lyceum provided the best show in town. Tom Mix, Will Rogers, Gene Autry, and John Philip Sousa and his band performed on its stage. Its owners, Eugene Hardwick and his sons Russell and Charles chose the Kansas City architectural firm of Boller Brothers, well-known theater designers in the Midwest. They appear to have taken their inspiration for the Lyceum from the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroads depots and Fred Harvey’s “Harvey House” hotels in their design. It featured an air-cooling system, 600 seats and its interior design largely is intact.
The Hardwicks contracted with Paramount Pictures to show films and maintained a tradition from an earlier Lyceum of using the theater for community events. The local MainStreet program and the city took ownership in 1982, remounting the restored marquee, and began holding community events.
Listing the theaters in the State and National registers will draw renewed attention to them, according to HPD. The attention, when coupled with active MainStreet programs and other downtown revitalization plans, could help spur new economic activity downtown and renew interest in these small-town movie palaces.
“Movie theaters were the heart and pride of small-town New Mexico,” said John Murphey, HPD Register coordinator. “Their slow demises as downtowns emptied only accentuated the ghost-town feel many communities took on, leaving few reasons for area residents to stroll their once-busy main streets at night.”
Down the street from the Lyceum, the Hardwicks opened the State in 1940. It is considered the most striking example of modernism found in any New Mexico theatre. A circular glass-block tower rises from above the marquee and reaches higher than the curved parapet that masks a barrel roof. Its modern air-conditioning system and fresh style inspired the Hardwicks to restyle the Lyceum’s exterior, giving it a molded stucco façade in the Moderne style. The Hardwicks kept up to date and retained a competitive edge over theater chains that started to move into Clovis at the time.
|
||||||||||||