~ Est 1983 ~
Roswell, New Mexico - The UFO Capital of the World!
$14.95 from Amazon
9.99 on Kindle
(readable on iPad,
PC, Mac,
etc.)
also available from
The
Book Depository
(FREE Worldwide Delivery!)
or in
Espresso Book Machines,
and on
NOOK
About Roswell
1947 UFO Crash
Characters, Events
(coming soon)
Tour Roswell
About the Book
Find
Other Books, DVDs, CDs about
Roswell
Links (coming soon)
Contact Us
Along the Spring River Recreation Trail in Roswell, New Mexico
In 1984 Roswell’s Parks and Recreation Director A.B. Gwinn and City Planner Ivan Hall developed a proposal for the beginning of a Bike Trail that would eventually stretch five miles (8 km) through the center of Roswell, from Enchanted Lands Park on the west to the Spring River Park and Zoo on the east. Hall and others eventually put funding together from seventeen different sources, ranging from state grants to jars of coins collected by children, to complete this popular trail for walking, skating, and bike riding.
Some of Our Attractions:
Spring River Golf Course (1612 West 8th Street). The Recreation Trail skirts this par 71 municipal golf course—watch for golf balls! Greens fees are quite reasonable ($11.00 for nine holes, $16.00 for eighteen holes if you walk, $26.00 with a cart) with special rates for students and senior citizens.
In the early years of Roswell’s history, visiting families often camped on the north bank of the Spring River in this area, as did the Ninth Cavalry of African-American Buffalo Soldiers sent here in 1879 from Fort Stanton to keep the peace during the Lincoln County War. Later the City established fairgrounds on the eastern end of this section where today residences line Riverside Drive. The first Southeastern New Mexico Fair held here in 1892 included agricultural and homemaking exhibits inside the huge Alfalfa Palace made entirely of hay bales, as pictured in an historic photo hanging in the lobby of the Best Western Sally Port Inn. The fair also featured foot races, baseball games, and horse races.
Hard-packed sand formed the tees and “greens” for the first nine-hole Roswell Municipal Golf Course built on this location in the 1920s. The fairways were mowed prairie. The rough was unmowed prairie.
In 1936 WPA workers built a 37-par, nine-hole course here with actual grass on the greens and tees, although the fairways remained questionable. They also built the stonemasonry Clubhouse southeast of the current tennis courts in Cahoon Park. That same year the City Council recommended against an audacious request to let women use the course. The City Councilors must have changed their minds at some point, because LPGA Champion Nancy Lopez learned to play golf here by following her mother and father around that same nine-hole course in the 1960s.
In 1966 the City built the new Clubhouse at its current location farther west and renamed the facility the Spring River Golf Course. When the “back nine” was added in 1975, Nancy Lopez had the honor of being the first person to tee off on the new section. 622-9506. Open 7:30 a.m. until dark every day except Christmas.
Boy Scout Hut (808 North Missouri Avenue). WPA workers completed this small, brown, flat-roofed structure in 1937 with building materials donated by local lumberyards and one hundred dollars from the Kiwanis Club. Old light poles from the baseball field at Thorne Park on East 2nd Street became its vigas, which are the exposed roof beams characteristic of this Pueblo Revival style architecture. The Scout Hut has since expanded several times, always with donated materials and labor.
Roswell Boy Scout Troop 2, organized at the First Methodist Church in 1916 just nine years after Lord Baden-Powell founded Boy Scouting in England, still meets here regularly. Troop 2 was the first Boy Scout Troop ever to tour Carlsbad Caverns. In 1922, after descending in a guano bucket—used by the company that mined the rich fertilizer deposits—the boys followed Caverns’ discoverer, cowboy Jim White, on a torchlight tour through the giant rooms, then spent the night underground camping among the fantastic formations.
The bend in the Spring River here was a popular spot for full immersion baptisms early in the Twentieth Century. Parishioners lined the sloping banks singing hymns while the principals waded in the deep, clear water where bubbling artesian springs added to the river’s flow.
POW/MIA Park (912 North Pennsylvania Avenue). WPA workers completed stonemasonry walls lining the Spring River banks through Cahoon Park in the late 1930s. German Prisoners of War continued the work in this area and farther downstream during the 1940s.
The United States Army established the Roswell Prisoner of War Internment Camp in the Orchard Park area thirteen miles (21 km) southeast of Roswell in 1942. It held 4,800 prisoners until after the end of World War II in 1945, mostly German troops from General Rommel’s North African campaign. The POWs gen-rally believed they were treated well and some even returned with their families after the war to settle in the Roswell area. Prisoners were allowed to earn one dollar a day working on farms and ranches or completing public construction projects. Several guards usually accompanied large groups of prisoners, but individuals or small groups working on farms or ranches were simply dropped off in the morning and picked up again in the afternoon. The camp recorded few escape attempts, not because the prisoners feared the guards, some suggested, but because they were amazed and intimidated to see that every farmer and rancher carried a rifle in his truck.
Here, between Kentucky and Pennsylvania Avenues, the POWs incorporated a German Iron Cross design into the north wall of the riverbank. Angry citizens soon covered it with buckets of cement, but in the 1980s City workers removed the cement and dedicated this small area as POW/MIA Park, to commemorate all Prisoners of War and those Missing in Action.
Members of the German Air Force, the Luftwaffe, who used the spacious airport runways at the RIAC to practice take-offs and landings in the 1990s, do-nated a portion of the Berlin Wall to the park to commemorate today’s friendship between our two countries. We know that the portion on display here came from the west side of the wall because only on the west side could people get close enough to cover it with graffiti. The east side of this wall, built to prevent Soviet-bloc citizens from escaping to freedom in the west, was a no-man’s land—anyone approaching it was shot.
Spring River Park and Zoo (1306 East College Avenue). In the 1930s Roswell’s zoo began as a small collection of animals in Cahoon Park just west of the swimming pool. In 1966 the zoo—including a bear, a deer, a pronghorn, two ostriches, and a lion whose tail had been bobbed by two drunken airmen—moved to this current location where it had room to expand. The only problem: people living around Cahoon Park missed the early morning roaring of the lion.
One of the most popular exhibits in the zoo is the Prairie Dog Town, also inhabited by Burrowing Owls. These prairie dogs, descendants of animals moved from the Wool Bowl area when the stadium was constructed in 1963, often sit on their haunches guarding the entrances to their elaborate system of burrows, communicating with their neighbors through shrill calls. The Burrowing Owls take advantage of the prairie dog burrows for nesting. They come and go as they please, living in the zoo only by choice. One of the few owls active during the day, the small Burrowing Owls often sit near the burrow entrances watching zoo visitors as well.
Another popular area is the Children’s Zoo containing child-sized animals such as ponies and goats that appeal to younger visitors. A beautiful antique carousel stands near the Children’s Zoo. Choose your steed—or a more exotic mount—and hop aboard before the music starts! A gift to the children of Roswell in 1971 from oil company executive and carousel horse collector Marianne Stevens, this 1927 Spillman carousel made in North Tonawanda, New York, arrived without horses, but Mrs. Stevens also donated the animal figures to fill it. All were carved before 1917 and include a giant chicken, a cow, a deer, and a life-sized St. Bernard, all from France. The rhinoceros is German. The rest are American-carved. The size of the saddles indicates that these figures were designed to hold adults as well as children, as carousels were popular amusements for all ages in the early Twentieth Century.
Marianne Stevens also raised money for the miniature railroad train that takes visitors along the edge of the stocked Fishing Pond (for children under 12 only, no license required) where Canada Geese congregate in winter. It also cir-cles the Longhorn Cattle Pasture with its windmill. Don’t forget to scream as you go through the tunnel! The gas-powered locomotive pulling the train is a 1/3-scale replica of the C.P. Huntington, the first engine Collis P. Huntington purchased for the Southern Pacific Railroad which he organized in 1871. The half-mile of train track came from an amusement park “back east.” City carpenter Ross Delaney built the train station out of timbers from the old Walker Air Force Base stables so the City named it in his honor. Tickets for rides on either the Carousel or the Train (that run daily during the summer and on spring and fall week-ends) are only 25 cents.
For more complete information about attractions along the Spring River Recreation Trail . . .
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!
also $9.99 on
Kindle
and available from other online booksellers, through your local
bookstore, or on
NOOK.
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!
$2.99 on
Kindle
Copyright
© 2008 -2011
by Cleanan Press, Inc.
All rights reserved. .