Saint James Hotel Lodging

Linda Davis - “CS Ranch and Maxwell Land Grant”

Buddy Morse - Old Mill Museum Keeper and Curator

Steve Zimmer - Lecture on Maxwell Land Grant and Colfax County War

Audience

Waite Phillips Mansion on the Philmont Scout Ranch

DAWSON, NEW MEXICO

Dawson, New Mexico

In 1869 John Barkley Dawson pruchased over 24,000 acres from the Maxwell Land Grand in this valley for $3,700.  He lived here with his family for more than 30 years.

Coal was found on the land about 1895, but the first coal mine on Dawson’s ranch didn’t open until 1901 when the Dawson Fuel Company was formed by Charles Eddy, and a railroad spur was built from Tucumcari to Dawson.  In 1906 the Phelps Dodge Corporation purchased the property, mining the coal for use on the railroads and for the smelting the copper from its Arizona mines.  An increasing market for coal brought rapid development of the town until it reached a population of 9,000.  Many of these townspeople were immigrants from Italy, Poland, Germany, Greece, Yugoslavia, the British Isles, Finland, Sweden and Mexico.  Everyone enjoyed comfortable homes, a community swimming pool, an opera house, a golf course, two churches, a well staffed hospital and a hotel.  The Phelps Dodge Mercantile Company (the “Company Store”) was a department store that sold almost everything - food, clothing, hardware, furniture, drugs, jewelry, fresh baked goods from its own bakery and ice from its own ice plant.

In the 1920s there were four schools that served over 1,200 students.  Dawson’s ball teams were virtual powerhouses, and the school bands a source of pride.

On April 30, 1950, the town was closed!  Natural gas and oil took the place of the coal mined in Dawson.  The buildings were torn down or relocated to nearby towns and the mining equipment was salvaged.

There never was a town like this before and there never will be again!

THE DAWSON CEMETERY NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES

On April 9, 1992, this cemetery was placed on the National Register.  It is unusual for a cemetery to be recognized for this honor.  However, the Dawson Cemetery met all the requirements because of its association with the broad patterns of immigration to our country, with its history of coal mining and company towns, and specifically its association with two of the worst underground mine disasters in the history of American coal mining.  A total of 263 men were killed in an underground explosion, which took place on October 22, 1913.  Again, on February 8, 1923, another disaster occurred and 122 men were killed.

Most of these are buried here as shown by the rows of iron crosses that were provided by Phelps Dodge Corporation.  All other grave markers were provided by the families of the deceased.

This memorial was placed here on September 3, 2000, to commemorate those buried here and to continue the memory of the town.  Since the town’s closing in 1950, over a thousand former residents and their descendants and friends attend a biennial reunion on the Labor Day weekend.  Virtually nothing remains today to show that the town was one of the largest in New Mexico in the 1920s.