Old Lincoln Days (It’s Not What You Think)
[Guest post by DRJ]
It’s time for Old Lincoln Days in Lincoln County, New Mexico, a site made famous by Billy the Kid. The Lincoln Pageant Festival Corporation takes visitors back to the days of the Wild West including a cowboy church service, a parade, and a reenactment of the events of the Lincoln County War in The Last Escape of Billy the Kid, a play that “starts with the killing of John Tunstall and it goes all the way to Billy the Kid escaping the courthouse.”
I’ve been to Lincoln County dozens of times and it always fascinates me, plus I like that the organizers don’t forget good old common sense:
“I advise people not to wear flip-flops because there are a lot of horses,” [DeAnn Kessler, manager for the Lincoln State Monument] said.
***
[Beverly Hammond, a historic interpreter for the Lincoln State Monument, also] volunteered a bit of advice for newcomers.“I advise people to bring trash bags because it always rains opening night.”
Lincoln County is off the beaten path but check it out if you’re ever in the area, especially if you liked the John Wayne movie Chisum. And if you’ve never heard about Lincoln County, there’s background here and here.
— DRJ
Lincoln County’s tight. There’s this jailhouse where you can see the bullet hole from the exit wound that Pat Garrett put in Billy the Kid… at least I think that’s the way of it.
Leviticus (f565c1) — 8/6/2009 @ 8:49 pmIt’s been a while.
Leviticus (f565c1) — 8/6/2009 @ 8:49 pmI love New Mexico. It’s the home of some great places and people, plus a few scoundrels.
DRJ (8d138b) — 8/6/2009 @ 8:58 pmI think you’re right about the bullet hole, Leviticus, but it wasn’t Pat Garrett that time:
DRJ (8d138b) — 8/6/2009 @ 9:04 pmDRJ, I don’t live in New Mexico.
SPQR (26be8b) — 8/6/2009 @ 9:07 pmCapitan, Ruidoso, San Patricio, New Mexico Military Institute, and the Goddard rocket exhibit in Roswell are worthy side trips.
steve (2be998) — 8/6/2009 @ 9:07 pmRight as rain, steve, and I also like White Sands National Monument and Cloudcroft.
SPQR – Heh. Who would even think of calling you a scoundrel?
DRJ (8d138b) — 8/6/2009 @ 9:11 pmDRJ, hehe. Only a few million, DRJ. Only a few million.
SPQR (26be8b) — 8/6/2009 @ 9:12 pmI have dear friends who just retired to New Mexico last month. They rolled out of Cali and didn’t look back. They are ridiculously happy and thrilled with the massive blue sky and lots of elbow room. Salve to a life lived in the harried golden state.
Dana (57e332) — 8/6/2009 @ 9:31 pmGreetings from Rainy Lincoln County;
It’s wet. It’s raining. Bring an umbrella and boots! It has been unusually humid. If you are going to the track, plan on rain. We had a cloud burst this afternoon like nothing I’ve seen in 12 years of living here in Ruidoso.
Sunday services at Holy Mount Episcopal Church in Ruidoso start at 11AM now. The Pink Flamingo will be there – late as usual.
There’s a new little Mexican eatery called Cozmal in the Gazebo shopping center (if you can call it that) in Ruidoso. I highly recommend it.
SJR
SJ Reidhead (d7158c) — 8/6/2009 @ 11:01 pmThe Pink Flamingo
“Bob, the Kid has killed Bell.”
I liked the line Sam Packinpah added in “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid”. Olinger looks at the shotgun Billy is pointing at him and says “And now he’s killed me, too”.
nk (3e2246) — 8/7/2009 @ 3:45 amMuch of what we “know” about the Lincoln County War is fable and fiction, and movies and novels are as “authentic” as any historical account. Pat Garrett started it with his “The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid”. It turned out to be anything but. It was actually written by Ash Upton, who had dreams of being another Ned Buntline or even Mark Twain, and he did an almost totally fictionalized, sensantionalistic book for purposes of marketability.
One thing is pretty well known, though. John Chisum was no John Wayne. Among other things, he never carried a gun. He was more like the gun-hiring rancher, played by Ed Asner, in “El Dorado”.
nk (3e2246) — 8/7/2009 @ 4:01 amThe conflict between the realities, and myths, of the Old West,
AD - RtR/OS! (7ba5f7) — 8/7/2009 @ 9:33 amwas handled quite nicely by Jack Ford
(who created quite a few of those myths himself)
in a “presser” near the end of “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”:
Print the legend!
What you don’t realize about Lincoln County when you first go there is the elevation — above 8,500 feet at some points — makes the Ruidoso/Capitan/Cloudcroft area a start contrast from what’s around it, especially the 4,300 foot drop (in about 20 miles) out of the Sacremento Mountain Pine Forests and into the stark desert around White Sands. It’s also good this time of year when temperatures are in the low 100s in the Permian Basin or around El Paso to make a quick trip up there and find the highs are somewhere in the mid-70s — though come winter, you can be driving in the 50s at the lower elevations and suddenly find yourself needing chains in Lincoln County.
(And as far as the desert goes, the lava flows between Carrizozo and the White Sands Trinity Site also fall under the something-you-don’t-expect category, especially when you find out the lava flows date back only about 12,000 years and the mountains around Ruidso and up the Rio Grande Rift valley are still considered volcanically active.)
John (f82202) — 8/7/2009 @ 11:20 amGeek fact. Lincoln is a place in England — obviously where the name comes from. Beautiful town, on hill overlooking Lincolnshire (funny how that works). Anyway, Lincoln is shortened and Anglicized from Linda Colonia — beautiful colony — from Roman Times. So its sort of like full circle, Linda Colonia -> Lincoln (place) -> Lincoln (name) — > Lincoln county New Mexico were it could once again be Linda Colonia.
And Linda Ronstadt’s from New Mexico, right? And she dated Jerry Brown, the best Cali governor ever.
hortense (aka horace) (411ef0) — 8/7/2009 @ 3:35 pmhortense is off her meds again.
AD - RtR/OS! (7ba5f7) — 8/7/2009 @ 4:13 pm