Santa Rosa to Fort Sumner to Roswell

We started the morning at the Auto Museum on Historic Route 66 in Santa Rosa.  Mark knows I love old cars, and this place had 30 old and not-so-old cars. It was a lot of fun.  Then we drove about 45 minutes south to Fort Sumner.  

This was an actual Fort in the 1860s and was the site of the Long Walk of Navajo and Apache.  The government relocated them from their ancestral homes to what was supposed to be a new way of life, farming, in southern NM.  Unfortunately, many died walking up to 400 miles in very few days to get here.  The land and climate did not support farming so more died of starvation, and the Pecos River was not sanitary so many died of disease from the bad water.  Also the Apache and Navajo were natural enemies, so putting them together was not a good idea either.  Eventually the Apache all just ran off back to their native lands.  After about four years the Navajo were told they could go back to their land as well.  It was a disaster all around.  This place, called Bosque Redondo at Fort Sumner, to the Navajo is like Auschwitz to the Jews, the site of a holocaust. Once the relocation experiment was given up, the fort was abandoned.  After 30 years of nothing there, a rich cattleman named Maxwell bought all the land, had a ranch of 9000 cattle, and started a town that he called Fort Sumner, even though there was no longer a fort.  This is when Billy the Kid came here.  He liked Maxwell's daughter.  Pat Garrett shot the Kid at the Maxwell house, which was just a few yards away from the site of the main part of the fort.  When the original Maxwell died, his son squandered the fortune, most people left the town, and finally the Pecos flooded and swept the rest away.  Today Fort Sumner is still a small town but several miles away from the site of the original fort and town.  We visited the Billy the Kid Museum, the Fort Sumner museum and the Maxwells' and the Kid's gravesite, and the Bosque Redondo Memorial on the site of the original Fort Sumner, built to explain and honor the Long Walk.  Fascinating day!  Now we are in Roswell. The plan today is to go to the UFO Museum in the morning and the art museum in the afternoon.

I ate at Subway and Denny's yesterday as planned, 1400 calories. I'm down two pounds from yesterday morning after all that Mexican food, but still up a half pound from my lowest point on this trip.  We are going to eat Subway and Denny's again today and probably for the next three days.  This should help a lot.

This Woodie is for sale, as are many of these cars.  This is the most expensive car in here, 95k.

Chevy Bel Air, love all that chrome and big fins.

This is a 1965 Mustang, which I never had, but I did have a 1968 Fort Cortina in the same exact color with the white vinyl interior.  This sort of reminded me of it.

This museum was started a long time ago by one man who just kept collecting old things and things related to Billy.  Eventually he opened this museum which is actually HUGE!  His descendants are running it today.

I love the Carnival glass in these museums.  I see it everywhere.  I had four pieces that belonged to my mother, but one broke and I gave two away.  I use the last one every day to hold bananas and avocados.

Preparing to watch the EXCELLENT 47 minute film on Billy the Kid.

The door to Mark's right is the actual wooden door from the Maxwell house that Billy was backing through when Pat Garrett shot him in the back.

This museum also had some classic cars.  This is a 1953 Studebaker.  Mark thought his family used to have this car in this color when he was a little boy.

Mark is taking his own picture of this car.

There is a small museum here, but unfortunately, it is closing at the end of August.  Auctioneers have already come to look over the things inside.  So sad.  Glad we got here when we did.

Painting of the Long Walk in this next museum.

The long white things on the walls are handwritten letters from Billy the Kid, mostly to Governor Lew Wallace (author of Ben Hur) trying to get things straightened out, asking for a pardon if he gave evidence and pointed fingers.  The Governor agreed finally, but he did not fulfill his promises.  He did not pardon Billy.  Wallace wanted out of his job as Governor and eventually left the area to go write the novel.

The cemetery is next to the small museum.  I guess when the museum closes, there will just be the cemetery here.  It's about three miles down the road from the Billy the Kid museum and half mile away from the site of the original fort.

This is the man who bought up the Fort Sumner land 30 years after it was abandoned.

Then up the road a half mile to the site of the Fort and the forced relocation.

This huge mural was very impressive, the Native Americans struggling to walk and the US soldiers forcing them.

Yes, that's a swastika.  I did not know it was originally a Navajo symbol called the Swirling Log.

90 miles south to Roswell....it looked like this the entire way.  We only passed a few cars and some cows and sheep.  Don't do this drive without a full tank of gas!

And then VOILA!  Welcome to Roswell!