LONELINESS IN UNION COUNTY
The black spot in the center of this not very attractive picture is a squatter’s hut.
AFTER SOME YEARS
In contrast with the top picture is this one of an attractive farmhouse which shows what can be done on the plains of New Mexico.
The first claim ever taken up in this region was in 1878, on Little Goose Creek, near Big Horn, and the first irrigation ditch was constructed the next year. Big Horn was laid out in 1880, and the first store opened. The first newspaper in the county was the Big Horn Sentinel, and the first agricultural fair was held in Big Horn in 1885. The first cabin was built on the present site of Sheridan City in 1878. Sheridan was laid out in 1882 and incorporated as a city in 1884. Until 1881, the territory contained in Johnson and Sheridan Counties was unorganized and had no county government, but lay within the jurisdiction of Carbon County courts. It became Johnson County in 1881. In 1887 it was divided by popular vote, the northern portion being named Sheridan County in memory of the gallant General Phil Sheridan, whose army, in the 1881 expedition, camped on the site of Sheridan City.
Union County, in centuries past the camping grounds of vanished tribes, is now white man’s country, but it did not become so until the Santa Fé trail opened the great Southwest. With the Rabbit Ear Mountains to guide settlers the old trail came across Union County, untravelled until 1822, and finally, two years later, the first wagons crept slowly westward, facing in that pioneer mood now become historic the hardships of climate and the perils of hostile redskins. In Union County the story survives of a massacre by Indians, which accounts for the tardy white settlements in this region.
In 1870, there were about a dozen homes of white settlers in the whole area. The railroad, in 1887-88, encouraged development which began with Clayton a year later. In February, 1893, the Territorial Legislature incorporated into Union County parts of Colfax, Mora and San Miguel. The original boundaries of Union County were not changed until 1903, when 265 square miles were added to Quay County. Beginning in the northern part of the county and gradually working southwards, stockmen took up claims close to water and used public land for grazing. Up to about 1900, most of the territory remained open range land in which cattle were raised on a large scale, but since that time, it has gradually been homesteaded.
