Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities

Sometimes words the only way to preserve history

Our Roosevelt County community has had a bit of angst these past few weeks as we prepared to part with some of our history. Antique windmills in a collection put together by a Portales couple were partially auctioned off by the county and the fate of Gov. W.E. Lindsey’s home, which failed to sell in the same auction, is now unknown.

Sometimes history can only be preserved in the printed or spoken word. I thought this might be a good time to recall some of Lindsey’s history for our community.

The year was 1912 and as the new year was ushered in New Mexico Territory was on the verge of becoming the 47th state in the union.

By that time Portales had been around for more than a decade and the courthouse signifying the city as the county seat of Roosevelt County was only nine years old.

It was a busy time for the fledgling eastern New Mexico town and a lot happened in the decade prior to statehood.

One central figure in those busy times was Washington Ellsworth Lindsey.

Lindsey, a lawyer born in 1862 in Ohio, migrated to New Mexico Territory in 1900 and settled in Portales. There he opened a law office and bought a 160 acre tract of land north of Portales. He began speculating by dividing the land into lots and forming the Portales Townsite Company with a partner. Soon after arriving in Portales he was appointed U.S. commissioner and among his duties was overseeing the issuance of homestead claims in the area.

Lindsey and others in the community felt like the growing city deserved to hold a county seat in a new county and Lindsey went to work writing a proposal to carve a new county from neighboring Chaves and Guadalupe counties.

The Legislature of 1903 approved the measure along with a budget for building a courthouse in the new county named after the sitting president, Theodore Roosevelt.

Over the next few years Lindsey continued to lead the community from the post of county clerk and later assistant district attorney. He also helped form and was president of an irrigation district that proposed to drill wells and pump water into ditches for the farmers with shares in the district. Though the district faltered, the experiment proved how productive the soil of the Portales area could be when irrigated.

Portales continued to grow late in the first decade of that century and after a series of devastating fires the decision was made to incorporate as a city so that improvements such as a public water supply, firefighting equipment and sanitation systems could be established. The measure passed the Legislature in early 1909.

Lindsey, a Republican, allowed his name to be put on the ballot for mayor in the city’s first election on the prohibition slate and the ticket won the election making Lindsey the city’s first mayor serving from 1910 to 1916.

Portales’ history began with a struggle between the forces of wet and dry, which continued throughout much of its first 100 years. In the years prior to national prohibition, Portales waivered back and forth between period of sales and no-sales of alcohol.

Portales was quickly growing out of its wild days as a cow town and farmers and businessmen began to change the face, culture and values of the dusty city.

As mayor, Lindsey was tabbed to serve on the Constitutional Convention of 1910. At the convention he was the leader of the progressive wing of the Republican party and fought for such measures as women’s suffrage, direct primary elections and providing for more elective and less appointive state offices, the mainstream of the party didn’t buy into those forward-thinking ideas, however.

In the election of 1916, utilizing his numerous Santa Fe connections Lindsey successfully campaigned for and was elected lieutenant governor of the state, an office he would hold for a very short time. As his term began, newly elected Gov. Ezequiel Cabeza de Baca was on his deathbed. By Feb. 18, 1916, he succumbed to his illness and Lindsey became the third governor of the state.

World War I loomed large early in Lindsey’s governorship and the responsibilities placed on him for the war effort consumed his time in office. When his term ended in 1918 he failed to receive the Republican Party’s nomination, partly because he refused to appease the party bosses and partly because they felt a Spanish surname was necessary to win the election.

Lindsey returned to his law practice and became active in one of his greatest passions, public education, by serving for years on the Portales School Board. His national political career revived briefly when he served as a delegate to the 1924 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, the convention that nominated President Calvin Coolidge to what would be his first elected term.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

[email protected]