Portales

The springs that named the town ran from a row of cave openings in a caliche cliff southeast of today's city, beside the old cattle trail to Fort Sumner. A young cattleman, Doak Good, ran stock there in the 1880s and is remembered for a feud with a neighbor named Henson, fought partly with an old Sharps buffalo gun. Josh Morrison opened a store at the springs about 1897 and moved it to the new townsite when the Pecos Valley and Northeastern arrived at the turn of the century.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Portales Population 9940 - Elevation 4004 ft. Portales derives its name from the porch- like appearance of a cave entrance at nearby Portales Springs. It developed as a major peanut producing region in the early twentieth century, after the Pecos Valley Railroad opened the area for commercial agricultural development. Eastern New Mexico University was founded here in 1934.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Blackwater Draw — 5.2 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

• Portales — 2.5 mi
• Eastern New Mexico University — 2.5 mi
• Rose Powers White — 4.9 mi
• Blackwater Draw — 5.0 mi