Clovis

This panel is reported missing from the state visitor center near Texico; HMdb photographs its empty former site. The town it described began as Riley's Switch and became Clovis by a story nobody has documented: a Santa Fe official's daughter, or wife, was reading about Clovis, the first Christian king of the Franks. Accounts differ on whose daughter, the railroad president Edward Ripley's or another officer's. The name then traveled back in time. After stone points were found at nearby Blackwater Draw, archaeologists named the Clovis culture for the town, not the other way around.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Clovis Population 31,194 - Elevation 4,260 During the 1700s and early 1800s, Comanche Indian buffalo hunters used trails that passed near here. In 1907 the Santa Fe Railroad established Clovis to serve as the eastern terminal of the Belen Cutoff, which would connect with the transcontinental line at Belen. Formerly the domain of ranchers, the railroad opened the area to farmers.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Blackwater Draw — 16 mi
  The site between Clovis and Portales that gave the Clovis culture its name, found by a nineteen-year-old in 1929 and dug for decades inside a working gravel pit.

More markers nearby

• Ida O. Jackson — 8.4 mi
• Norman Petty Recording Studios Clovis — 9.5 mi
• Blackwater Draw — 14 mi
• Rose Powers White — 14 mi