1908 Letter from a Young Woman Homesteading in Rural New Mexico, Including a Description of an Armed Conflict with a Sheriff
- Six page letter measuring 5 ¼ x 6 ½ inches. Envelope with many unrelated manuscript markings
- Solano, New Mexico , 1908
Solano, New Mexico, 1908. Six page letter measuring 5 ¼ x 6 ½ inches. Envelope with many unrelated manuscript markings. Letter Near Fine.. A letter from Irene Upton (1888–1956) in Solano, New Mexico to her friend Carroll B. Benton in Boston. Upton was born in New Hampshire—her father was New Hampshire State Senator Hiram Upton—and moved to New Mexico to homestead with her family in 1900. Around 1907, the family purchased what would be the Upton Ranch in La Cinta Canyon, near Solano, a small town in northeastern New Mexico that is now nearly abandoned. At the time, the town’s economy was based on the mine in nearby Dawson. The Dawson mine was the site of two explosions, in 1913 and 1923, that caused mass casualties; Upton’s older brother Lloyd Peter Upton was killed in the earlier explosion, which was the second deadliest in US history.
Upton describes hosting company and horseback riding, especially riding “three mighty mean horses”; on her family camping trip to the Rockies, she rode a horse “that the people up town won’t ride”. She tells Benton about the town’s weekly Literary Society, “one excitement of our life”:
“They run a paper, different editors each week, the paper is nothing but lemons slams + knocks. Then they have readings + a debate. I am on this week. Resolved that, ‘The horse is more useful than the car.’ Sounds foolish but lots of room for argument.”
Most excitingly, Upton witnessed a near-shootout in downtown Solano:
“We had two shooting scrapes in one day this week + as I happened to be in town when the first started up, I came near not getting home. A Texan sheriff came in after a saloon keeper, the saloon keeper swiped a horse and beat it out of town with a 30-30 across his saddle. After him two sheriffs with six shooters drawn, then five minutes later four more joining the party[.] The man headed right for the canyon and of course we couldn’t go home on account of possible shooting. Same night our town blacksmith got drunk and went after the Texan sheriff on an old score and shot up town some before he was arrested.”
This incident was apparently totally overshadowed in the press by a shooting in June of that year, when Joe Melugin killed his employee Daniel Archuleta over an argument about Melugin’s wife.[1] From the casual way Upton speaks about the shootout, then immediately pivots to the weather, it seems that these sorts of events might not have been unusual for Solano.
Of interest to historians of New Mexico, especially life in its mining and ranching communities.
[1] “A Fatal Quarrel, Daniel Archuleta Mortally Wounded at Solano on Thursday Morning,” The Spanish American, June 13, 1908, 1.
Upton describes hosting company and horseback riding, especially riding “three mighty mean horses”; on her family camping trip to the Rockies, she rode a horse “that the people up town won’t ride”. She tells Benton about the town’s weekly Literary Society, “one excitement of our life”:
“They run a paper, different editors each week, the paper is nothing but lemons slams + knocks. Then they have readings + a debate. I am on this week. Resolved that, ‘The horse is more useful than the car.’ Sounds foolish but lots of room for argument.”
Most excitingly, Upton witnessed a near-shootout in downtown Solano:
“We had two shooting scrapes in one day this week + as I happened to be in town when the first started up, I came near not getting home. A Texan sheriff came in after a saloon keeper, the saloon keeper swiped a horse and beat it out of town with a 30-30 across his saddle. After him two sheriffs with six shooters drawn, then five minutes later four more joining the party[.] The man headed right for the canyon and of course we couldn’t go home on account of possible shooting. Same night our town blacksmith got drunk and went after the Texan sheriff on an old score and shot up town some before he was arrested.”
This incident was apparently totally overshadowed in the press by a shooting in June of that year, when Joe Melugin killed his employee Daniel Archuleta over an argument about Melugin’s wife.[1] From the casual way Upton speaks about the shootout, then immediately pivots to the weather, it seems that these sorts of events might not have been unusual for Solano.
Of interest to historians of New Mexico, especially life in its mining and ranching communities.
[1] “A Fatal Quarrel, Daniel Archuleta Mortally Wounded at Solano on Thursday Morning,” The Spanish American, June 13, 1908, 1.