~ Est 1983 ~
Roswell, New Mexico - UFO Capital of the World!
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About Roswell
1947 UFO Crash
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Roswell, New Mexico—South and Southwest
Some of Our Attractions:
St. Peter’s Catholic Church (805 South Main Street). Franciscan priests organized this parish in 1903 for Roswell’s Anglo Catholics. The congregation first met in an old soda-water bottling plant at either 911 South Main Street or 3rd Street and Virginia Avenue (accounts differ). In 1904 the congregation laid the foundation for the current building and met here in the enclosed basement until they completed the aboveground structure in 1917. St. Peter’s opened a parochial school in 1905 with eight grades staffed by lay teachers and the Sisters of St. Cisinni from Chicago. It closed in the 1960s due to financial problems and difficulties getting teachers. Roswell’s Community Kitchen serves a free lunch every weekday at St. Peter’s Community Center, 111 East Deming Street.
Ballard Funeral Home (910 South Main Street). Prosperous Roswell merchant Nathan Jaffa built this large house in 1903 and moved his family here from their home on South Richardson Avenue. In 1942 Bert Ballard, nephew of Sheriff Charles Ballard who led the Roswell area Rough Riders in 1898, purchased this house and transferred his undertaking business here from its previous location on Third Street. He later enlarged the building and added the white columns. Glenn Dennis was working here in 1947 when he received calls from the RAAF Mortuary Officer concerning small coffins and the preservation of bodies in the days following the UFO Crash.
Chaves County Administrative Offices: Joseph R. Skeen Building (St. Mary’s Hospital site) (1 St. Mary’s Place). The County Assessor and Appraiser, County Clerk, County Manager and Commissioners, Public Works Department, and Sheriff’s Department occupy this newly constructed (2002) building named in honor of the long-time Congressman from southern New Mexico. Its green dome is reminiscent of the Chaves County Courthouse downtown. Genealogists and others interested in land records for Chaves County will find them here.
Previously, St. Mary’s Hospital stood on this site. Four nuns of the nursing order Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother arrived in Roswell in 1904 and built the first portion of St. Mary’s Hospital here in 1906 through contributions of land, labor, and money from the community. It originally functioned as a tuberculosis sanitarium for the many “lungers” who had come to the Pecos Valley seeking health in a warm, dry climate. The first patient was a Franciscan priest. Gradually the hospital took on general patients, eventually having the usual medical, surgi-cal, pediatric, obstetrical, psychiatric, and emergency room areas.
Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr. was born in St. Mary’s Hospital in 1943 while his father was stationed at Roswell Army Air Field as a pilot instructor. Deutschendorf died in an aircraft accident in 1997 after becoming famous as singer John Denver, who wrote the Colorado State Song, “Rocky Mountain High,” as well as “Take Me Home, Country Roads” and many others. Demetria Gene Guynes, now actress Demi Moore, star of A Few Good Men and Ghost, was born here in 1962, attended El Capitan Elementary School (2807 West Bland Street) and Sierra Middle School (615 South Sycamore Avenue), and occasionally returns to Roswell to visit relatives. Jockey Mike E. Smith, who rode Giacomo to his win in the 2005 Kentucky Derby, was also born here in 1965.
Chaves County purchased St. Mary’s Hospital in 1989, then combined it with Eastern New Mexico Medical Center, which the County had opened in 1955. St. Mary’s Hospital buildings were demolished in 1999. Statues of the Virgin Mary and Bernadette, the shepherdess who saw her in a vision at Lourdes, were moved from a small stone grotto here on the grounds to a similar grotto at Assumption Catholic Church (2808 North Kentucky Avenue) at that time.
South Park Cemetery (3101 S. Main Street). Roswell’s earliest cemetery was located in the Chihuahuita neighborhood just south of the Hondo River in the 1860s, although at that time family members often buried relatives in small private plots as well. The Anglo ladies of Roswell established a Cemetery Association in 1886 to care for the burying ground already established in this area by that time. The oldest marked grave here belongs to Captain Joseph Lea’s niece, Sophie Pierce, who died in 1883. Chihuahuita’s early graves were moved to this location in 1894 to make way for the Pecos Valley Railroad. Roswell ladies held fundraisers involving fortunetellers, flower stands, and plays at the (very short-lived) Op-era House for the upkeep of this cemetery and continued to support it even after the City took over in 1915 and changed its name from South Side to South Park Cemetery.
Men and women prominent in Roswell’s history buried here include Captain Joseph Lea, Elizabeth Garrett, E.A. Cahoon, Bob Crosby, John and Sophie Poe, J.P. and Amelia Church, Addison Jones, James Stockard, and Jim Hinkle. Kenny is not buried here.
A Memorial Day ceremony takes place here every year with Boy Scouts placing small American flags on the graves of all veterans, a practice that has continued since at least 1917 when Boy Scout Troops 1 and 2, including bugler and future artist Peter Hurd, came here to honor veterans.
In 2000 two English teachers from Mesa Middle School, Valarie Grant and Heidi Huckabee, organized their seventh- and eighth-grade classes to research and preserve information about Roswell’s past. The resulting collection of short biographies of some of Roswell’s citizens buried here, South Park Cemetery: Exploring Roswell’s Roots, along with a free and quite interesting cemetery walking tour brochure, Walking Through Roswell’s Past, are available at the Historical Center and the Roswell Visitor’s Center.
Garcia Law Firm (former Amonett house) (106 North Washington Avenue). The Amonett family built this stucco New Mexico Vernacular style house in 1929 and E.T. (for Elijah Thomas, not Extra-Terrestrial) Amonett, by himself or with his son Edd (1892-1963), Edd’s wife Nettie, and their daughter Jean, lived here off and on until 1945. E.T. Amonett had opened a boot shop and saddlery at 122 North Main Street in 1898 although it later moved to 210 North Main Street before Edd took over the successful business in 1913 when E.T. and his wife moved to El Paso. Items from this famous boot and saddle maker that remained in business until 1978—although Edd sold the business and retired in 1949—still appear on eBay.
This house remained a residence until 1983 when Roswell attorney Ramón Garcia took it over for his law offices. Over the years a dentist, a physician, a secretary, several military families, and the manager of the Dairy Queen just down the street lived here. At least one of the former residents doesn’t seem to have left, as items in the former dining room, now one of the offices, are often mysteriously rearranged and noises sometimes come from the room when it is empty. One client asked about the odd lady wearing such old-fashioned clothes that she had seen standing in there, suggesting that the ghostly presence may be an early resident, perhaps even Nettie Lusk Amonett (1894-1982) who grew up on a ranch in the Sacramento Mountains west of Roswell with an unusually independent spirit: riding horses, breaking broncos, and herding cattle with her older brother Ewing Lusk, long-time principal of NMMI’s High School Division. Does she still keep an eye on the place that was her home for so many years—and may still be?
Sierra Blanca Peak (looking west on West McGaffey Street, or any of the east-west streets in this area). Violent volcanic eruptions 35 million years ago created this cone-shaped mountain 90 miles (145 km) west of Roswell, the tallest mountain in southern New Mexico. In winter, snow-covered Sierra Blanca certainly lives up to its name when the strikingly white peak stands out against blue sky and brown hills.
Roswell High School (500 West Hobbs Street). Roswell’s oldest high school began as a division of Central School on Kentucky Avenue and graduated its first class—of three students—in 1901. It became Roswell High School and moved to a separate building designed in the Rapp brothers’ Military Gothic style at 500 South Richardson Avenue in 1911. All that remains of that first Roswell High School building are the gymnasiums and a few rooms at the Yucca Recreation Center. This current Roswell High School building, completed in 1954, bears little resemblance to the earlier building, or to the series of Roswell High School teen novels and the TV show of the last few years inspired by the UFO craze. Tourists and other aliens still like to have their photos taken in front of the RHS Coyotes sign out front though.
Martin Luther King Jr. Park (2701 South Union Avenue). Roswell’s annual Juneteenth Celebration takes place in this park named for the famed Civil Rights leader. Juneteenth began as a celebration of Freedom when long-delayed news of the Emancipation Proclamation reached slaves in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865. The first Juneteenth celebrations in the Roswell area took place in Blackdom, a town African-American homesteaders founded 16 miles (25 km) south of Roswell in the early years of the Twentieth Century. The town died out in the 1920s due to lack of water for agriculture, but the mid-June commemoration continues. Lots of good food is still the main feature of Roswell’s Juneteenth Celebration that today honors unity and multiculturalism in New Mexico, in addition to the end of slavery.
Randy Willis Park and Championship Field (2100 South Sunset Avenue). When the Roswell Lions Hondo baseball team won the Little League World Championship in Williamsport, Pennsylvania in 1956 they renamed their home field, just south of Roswell High School on Lea Avenue, “Championship Field.” As the baseball program grew in size, it needed more space. In 1967 the Lions Hondo Little League moved to this park and brought along its bleachers and fencing as well as the “Championship Field” plaque. The entire park was later named in memory of Randy Willis, a member of that World Champion Little League team who died of leukemia in 1980, as a plaque at the base of the flagpole indicates. This remains the home field for the Lions Hondo Little League, one of three such organizations in Roswell. Photos and memorabilia from the 1956 World Championship Team are on display in the Historical Center.
Fox Place (Roswell Relief Route at Brasher Road). In the area just south of Brasher Road the Relief Route passes over Fox Place, an archeological site no longer visible as it is now buried underneath the roadbed. The Jornada Mogollon people occupied the pit house village here along the Hondo River continuously from 1250 AD to 1325 and then sporadically until 1425.
The foundations of several small pit houses, along with pens for domesticated turkeys, were uncovered in constructing the Relief Route. During the subsequent archeological dig an underground kiva-like room also emerged with an amazing 15’ (5m) long green clay painting of a Feathered Serpent covering two of the walls: most likely a religious shrine.
After archeologists finished studying Fox Place they covered the remains, and construction of the Relief Route continued on top of the site. Still, driving along this stretch of the road, one can imagine a Mogollon family gazing to-ward the same hills and mountain peaks we see today, or following the chants of their shaman-artist as he prays to the Feathered Serpent in their under-ground kiva.
For more complete information about touring Roswell . . .
BUY the paperback version
(single copies or in bulk) of Lynn Michelsohn's guidebook
Roswell,
Your Travel Guide to the UFO Capital of the World!
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Also available . . .
Roswell, NM: The Ten Best FREE Things To Do (Plus a Few More)
Your Brief Travel Guide to Fun in the UFO Capital of the World!
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