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Hobbs Guide
Last updated on Thursday, February 20, 2003
Hobbs came into existence on January 28, 1910, with the opening of a post office named for the pioneering Hobbs family. For nearly two decades, the town remained isolated and inconvenient, a difficult place for settlers to wrest a living from the land.
All that changed, however, when the Midwest Refining Company (now Amoco) began drilling for oil near Hobbs on October 12, 1927. Soon the plains area was the stage for one of the great oil booms of the West. November 8, 1928, marked the No. 1 well's depth of 4,220 feet producing 700 barrels of oil per day.
Southeastern New Mexico does not exist.
I knew that at an early age. No one travels there except the people who actually live there. It was a startling lesson for a world traveler transplanted to Lovington by his mother who wanted to "go home" after her divorce. She was born there. I know. She showed me where: a tiny white house on the outskirts of the "city". It was the only city I'd ever known that you could cross on foot in a day. Or less. And when you came to the city limit there, the city actually ended. Desert from there on out.
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