Homesteader Mary Ellen "Mollie" Hall Warren Klapp

Mollie Klapp's marker came late. The Historic Preservation Division and the state transportation department dedicated it in May 2017 at NM-41 and Madrid Avenue, near Moriarty, and the state historian called her a brave woman whose life showed the hardships a homesteader faced. She had come from Oklahoma a widow with seven children, and her crop was the Estancia Valley's dryland pinto bean, grown without irrigation in the valley's climate and sandy soil. The panel itself names her last years in the state hospital plainly, without softening them.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Homesteader Mary Ellen "Mollie" Hall Warren Klapp 1862-1933 Eighty-million acres of public land in the West went into private ownership by 1900 through the 1862 Homestead Act. New Mexico drew hundreds of settlers who built homes and farmed 160-acre allotments in pursuit of a better life. Mollie Klapp was one. Born in Illinois, by 1900 she was widowed in Oklahoma with seven children when she decided to move to Moriarty, a "pinto bean capital of the world." The Estancia Valley is well-suited to dryland farming and helped New Mexico become the nation's fourth largest pinto bean producer by 1916 when 2.5 million pounds were harvested. Mollie farmed, taught school, and remarried. Her hard life led to institutionalization at the state mental health hospital in Las Vegas where she worked as a seamstress and housekeeper, and died from "exhaustion."

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument — 27 mi
  Three Spanish mission churches raised over Tiwa and Tompiro pueblos east of the Manzano Mountains in the 1600s, each of its own stone, and one never finished.

More markers nearby

• Estancia — 11 mi
• Estancia — 12 mi
• Tajique — 18 mi
• María "Concha" Concepción Ortiz y Pino de Kleven (1910-2006) — 22 mi