Portales hotel caused a stir

Portales' first skyscraper - in my lifetime known as the Plains Hotel and the Portales Inn, but sadly empty since the 1990s - recently received an extensive renovation. It has reopened as the Best Western Plus Portales Inn at 223 W. Second St.

We're all invited to a grand opening celebration from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday hosted by the Roosevelt County Community Development Corporation and Roosevelt County Chamber of Commerce.

With all due respect, they'll have trouble topping the excitement that happened on a Saturday way back in July 1951 when Portales saw a dream come true and this historic building first opened as the legendary Cal Boykin Hotel.

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Commercial overnight lodging first became available in Portales shortly after 1900. According to the book, "Roosevelt County History and Heritage," the Portales Hotel was one of the earliest places a weary traveler could stop for the night, outfitted with a cringe-worthy ratio of "32 rooms and one bath."

Other early hostelries listed included the Portales Valley Hotel, the Commercial Hotel, the Alamo, the W.N. Veck Hotel, the Charles Hotel, the George Baker Hotel (later called the Stratton Hotel), the City Hotel, the Holmes Hotel, and the Travelers Inn (the only one still standing and currently in use as apartments).

In the February 25, 1926, edition of the Portales Valley News, an editorial writer pointed out the need for updated lodging, writing that "A modern steam heated hotel would do much for the town and would bring many traveling men and tourists here."

The folks in Clovis must have had that same thought, because in October of 1931, they opened the Hotel Clovis - dubbed the "Skyscraper of the Plains" - with nine floors and 114 guest rooms.

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Life-altering distractions including the Great Depression and World War II may have sidetracked Portalesanos, but by the late 1940s the town was ready to consider its own project.

"Portales has a gym, Eastern New Mexico's Greyhounds, and they have everything else except a modern hotel," according to an article in the May 13, 1949, Portales Tribune.

Abe Ribble was chair of the Chamber's Industrial Committee in that era. Quoted in an undated newspaper clipping from the late 1940s, Ribble said the popularity of rodeo and roping warranted more local hotel rooms.

"Steer roping is becoming more popular," he said, "and as it is outlawed in Texas and we are so near the state line many Texans would come here for such shows if we could just offer them a place to spend the night."

While that may have been a somewhat sketchy argument, by the fall of 1949, an official "hotel building campaign" was under way, according to the Portales Tribune. It was led by Chamber of Commerce President John Burroughs, who later became New Mexico's 18th governor.

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Gordon Greaves was already penning his long-running "By the Way" column in the Portales newspaper, and on Nov. 10, 1949, he chided his colleagues at the Clovis News-Journal for referring to Portales as a "small Roosevelt county seat" while its residents explored building a hotel.

"That phrase 'small Roosevelt county seat' constitutes a challenge that will no doubt ring for weeks among the 12,500 citizens of this village," Greaves wrote. "We are feeling our oats, and are perfectly willing to take on Clovis in football to politics," noting that "a big hotel is the only thing Clovis has that we haven't gotten so far."

But, Greaves wrote, "Never underestimate the civic pride of a small town."

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In what was described by many as "self-salesmanship," dozens of local residents - mostly businessmen in Portales - dove into the task of convincing their friends and neighbors to fork over funds for $100 shares in the Portales Hotel Corporation.

Local businesses offered prizes to those who were able to sell the most shares on given days, incentives like an inner tube from Harris Firestone, a case of peanut butter from Portales Valley Mills, a pair of pajamas from Dunlap's, a wallet from John Skinner, an electric razor from B and J Drug, a Kaywoodie pipe from Portales Drug, and a pen and pencil set from Odom's Office Supply.

By the end of 1949, more than 800 investors were on board, 531 of those at the $100 level, according to the Portales Tribune.

And, Greaves noted, the money "wasn't from persons who had that amount of money lying around idle. A lot of it - perhaps 75 percent of the total - represents a real sacrifice on the part of those who have signed up."

Greaves wasn't kidding when he used the word sacrifice. In an article from Nov. 23, 1949, Eastern New Mexico University President Floyd Golden (a leader throughout the fundraising effort) "recounted how he and Leon and Woodrow Slaten had followed a client into a hospital where he was to shortly undergo a major operation and sold him $1,200 in stock."

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A number of potential sites were considered for construction, but ground eventually was broken on a 100 by 150-foot lot on what was then the corner of Union and Nevada streets.

By the summer of 1950, Greaves wrote that "construction watching season is in full swing, but it will be some time before the watchers get the kinks out of their backs. Most of the work going on now is on the ground, or below it.

"The building will be Portales' first skyscraper - four stories high," he continued. "Of course, the tallest structure in town remains Worley Bros. elevators, but this was built during the war when most people still in Portales were too stiff and too lame to look up."

On Oct. 10, 1950, a flag was planted atop the 58 1/2-foot "skeleton" of the hotel, marking the completion of the steel work, and within weeks brick work began.

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In April 1951, the decision came to name the new structure after Cal Boykin, the Midland, Texas, hotel operator who planned to lease the property.

According to an undated Portales Tribune clipping from that spring, Grady Beard, president of the hotel's board of directors, said "the board agreed to the name for the reason that Boykin is well known in hotel circles, and his name will draw trade that would not be attracted through use of a local name."

Boykin also put up $75,000 for furnishings and equipment of the original building.

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Another first was announced in a headline in the May 17, 1951, Portales Tribune: FIRST ELEVATOR IN PORTALES AT NEW HOTEL.

"Portales, a city with very little paving, curbs, and gutters in the residential district, has taken a big step forward commercially and socially," the article said. "The city's first elevator is installed in the new Cal Boykin Hotel. It will make five stops - basement and each of the four floors of the hotel."

Later that spring a brochure was published making the somewhat dubious claim that "Portales' New Hotel will be the only completely AIR CONDITIONED AND FIREPROOF HOTEL IN THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO."

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Various challenges - including a lengthy dispute with a state plumbing inspector - caused delays, but the grand-opening gala was finally set for July 14, 1951.

It created, as Greaves noted in a "By the Way" published on July 11, 1951, "some problems from a different quarter."

Those problems included "whether the $15 a plate dinner Saturday night is to be a formal affair," he wrote. "It can't be for the men, if they expect to raise the quota of 200 guests. There aren't two dozen dinner jackets in Portales."

But, he said, many local women had already purchased evening gowns for "what they considered to be the #1 social event in Portales' history."

In the end, the committee agreed to leave the formal tag for women and "let the men come in their best suit," Greaves said.

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Hotel Manager Arthur "Buck" Weinar reported at least 3,000 visitors attended the official opening of the Cal Boykin Hotel on July 14, 1951.

"Beautiful co-eds from Eastern New Mexico University acted as hostesses, conducting groups throughout the hotel and leading them to the coffee shop where they were served coffee and doughnuts with cream and sugar without charge," a newspaper article said. "Cal Boykin and his staff nobly stood up under a continual barrage of congratulations all day and through the evening Saturday."

J.B. Howell, manager of the hotel coffee shop, told the newspaper that he dispensed more than 2,000 cups of coffee and 1,552 doughnuts (although it was unclear who would have had time to count them).

Teenagers Harry Jordan and Bob Sollock, members of the Portales High School class of 1952, were busy as the hotel's first two bellhops, decked out in matching crisp white uniforms and black bowties.

Panzy Burton Jordan, who married Harry in 1957, said he and his friend Sollock thought they had snagged the two best jobs in Portales.

"They made so much money that first day," she said. "I think they made more money that first weekend than the whole rest of the summer."

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The sellout crowd at the evening event rubbed shoulders with New Mexico Gov. Edwin L. Mechem and other dignitaries. Burroughs acted as toastmaster, the Rev. Homer Akers gave the invocation, and Golden introduced guests.

The menu included "fruit cocktail, cottage cheese and olive salad, filet mignon with mushroom sauce, baked potato in butter, buttered June peas, red devil's food cake a la mode, hot rolls, and iced tea," the newspaper account recorded.

Grady Beard's keynote speech was titled - most fittingly - "It Couldn't Be Done, But We Did It."

Dancing followed in the newly christened Conestoga Room with music by Stookey's Collegians.

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In November of 1949, Greaves had written some prophetic words in his column.

"The main value of the project is that it has demonstrated to a lot of us that we can do bigger jobs than we thought possible," he wrote. "The job was the biggest test we have ever faced of our faith in our home town."

Betty Williamson remains skeptical of cottage cheese and olive salad but is tickled to see the hotel open again. Reach her at:

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