KNOWLES LOCATIONS
Knowles, Lea County, New Mexico
An Oasis on the Plains
based on an article in "Lea, New Mexico's Last Frontier", by Gil Hinshaw
"More favorable amendments to the Homestead Act in 1906 boosted the influx of settlers seeking free land, and from that year through 1910, Monument and the entire Llano of future Lea County, New Mexico experienced the high tide of homesteaders." Note: The Llano Estacado is a large grass plateau with few trees in the southwest U.S. in western Texas and southeast New Mexico; a cattle-grazing region, 1000-5000 feet above sea level (also called Staked Plain).
The spring at Monument, New Mexico had brought men together in the Llano's first community. A general store and post office accomplished the same ends further east on the plains and led to the growth of present Lea County's second, and for a number of years, largest city, KNOWLES. At the peak of its growth in 1909-1912, Knowles reached a population estimated at 500. Unlike Monument, however, the community was destined to vanish, leaving only an unmovable bank vault as a marker to its brief burst of civilization on the interminable flatness.
As far as can be determined, the Knowles settlement, about 9 miles north of present day Hobbs, existed without a name for a number of years in what was then eastern Eddy County, New Mexico. In 1903, when the first vestiges of civilization had already gathered at Monument Spring, Benjamin Lihu Knowles (1834 - 1925), the son of Samuel Lihu Knowles (1797 - 1787), [Knowles Progenitor, England #02 (Nottingham)] staked out a homestead about 18 miles to the northeast of the spring and slightly more than six miles from the Texas line. Following the example of Jim Cook three years earlier in Monument, Ben Knowles set up a general store in his home and obtained the right from the federal government to operate a post office.
The Knowles establishment was hardly
promising to look at. It consisted of a half dug-out connected to what
settlers called a 'dog-house' and a 'lean-to'. If for no other reason the
Knowles' business thrived because of the postal service opened up to newly
arrived settlers and the cowboys from High Lonesome Ranch adjacent to him.
By carrying the mail on horseback between the Monument Post Office and his own
distribution office, Knowles earned a regular government payment, no small thing
when his general store did not return a large profit. The Knowles' post
office permit was granted officially by the government on April 26, 1904.
Knowles, too, soon had competition. Early in 1906, the year that homesteading reached volume dimensions, J. L. Toole came over from his Causey Ranch and forming a partnership with Allen J. Heard, nephew of Allen C. Heard, and opened a general merchandise store on a homestead site one-half mile south of Knowles' store. The Toole and Heard General Store offered a wider variety of merchandise than did Knowles. Items that settlers could purchase from the newest business included millinery goods, windmills, fence posts and wire and what was known then as popular commodities; and the new store being more modern and spacious made itself attractive as a social center. Historian Belle S. Toole wrote of the store:
"The social activities were varied, yet they gave a "togetherness" atmosphere to the community. Much credit is given to the junior member of the firm, who with such cowboy friends as Clay McGonigal, then world's champion roper, brought neighbors together. Occasionally there was a barbeque with a picnic dinner spread on a platform erected along the east side of the store, shaded by a canvas overhead. At evening, musicians would come, and the platform became a dance floor. Once there was a ladies' riding contest (no lady thought of riding astride) for prizes. Local talent shows provided entertainment. Often people came for all-day religious services at the open air tabernacle and spread their basket lunches together at noon. The right-hand-man of the firm, Marvin L. Blackmon, served as the Sunday school superintendent."
Thus, the nucleus of a town began to form around the Toole-Heard firm. By 1907, D. Y. Musick had started a blacksmith shop and Robert Florence Love, later to be the founder of Lovington, New Mexico had opened the Love Hotel, a two-story structure that offered home-cooked meals to its guests.
This community with only the name of Ben L. Knowles' post office had its problems. With the swelling stream of settlers from 1906 onward, there was promise of a city developing, yet all the businesses were located on non-patented public lands where no one could erect a residence to which he eventually could claim ownership. Furthermore, the settlement needed a name. This last obstacle was overcome one day in 1907 when patrons of the Toole and Heard General Store arrived at the name Oasis. After all, it was the first point of civilization on the Llano after crossing over from Texas to the east.
In June 1908, John L. Emerson, who was to become postmaster in 1910 and later a justice of the peace, was called in to solve the problem of establishing a townsite that could be surveyed, laid out and developed. He agreed with the business people of the settlement that Oasis had potential. He concluded that the route to growth and reaching city status would be to move the entire settlement one-half mile further south where a townsite company could be formed and a patent obtained for the land. It seems apparent a minority, among them Robert Florence Love, his brother, Jim B. Love and Ben L. Knowles did not agree with this solution. It is not known what reasons lay behind their objections, but the Loves moved to their earlier homestead site to establish their own city which became Lovington, while Knowles resigned as postmaster, passing the appointment to Mrs. Nancy E. Thurmond who moved the post office into the Toole and Heard store.
This, in addition to relocation of the
settlement to a new townsite, marked the end of Oasis, which existed only a few
months, and the beginning of Knowles. Emerson took on all the details
leading to removal of the settlement. He first organized the Knowles
Townsite Company composed of himself, Toole, Heard, M. S. Groves and D. D.
Clark. The two latter men eventually relinquished their interests in the
company to W. U. Dannelley, W. G. Woerner and W. J. Barber. For the new
town location itself, Emerson secured 80 acres of the Toole homestead land and
joined it to the 160 acres of Heard land, then part of the High Lonesome Ranch
range. After the Knowles' townsite was platted, the task of removing the
original settlement's buildings was undertaken by George Lucas, a Carlsbad
drayman, who worked with mules and wagons to transport the structures the
one-half mile. Knowles was on its new location in September 1908.
With relocation, Knowles suddenly began doubling in size. The results over the next 20 months must have amazed Emerson who had the foresight to move the town. Enterprises of both private and public charter sprang up along the new town's main street, which ran north and south. D. H. Coleman opened the Knowles Pharmacy which specialized in ladies' perfumes, fine candies, and of course, patent medicines. Jack Russell managed the Knowles Cash Grocery and Dry Goods Company, offering 14 pounds of dried beans for $1, and 100 pounds of flour for $2.60; Hosteller's Restaurant, famed for its 35-cent meals and oysters on the half-shell was operated by Mrs. S. S. Manning, who also turned out fine feminine clothing; the telephone, an extension of Monument's one-phone system also arrived in this period; and J. Mullane*, a son of the Carlsbad Current publisher, W. H. Mulane, founded the Weekly Knowles News on May 24, 1909.
* After establishing the Knowles News, J. Mullane left it to be operated by his brother, Bernard F. Mullane, and relocated at Lovington where he founded the Lovington Recorder, a predecessor of the Lovington Leader. Mullane's son, W. H. Mullane III, became an editor of the Silver City Enterprise, while the father later became a linotype operator in San Angelo, Texas. W. H. Mullane, who founded the Carlsbad Current in 1892, also introduced the first linotype to Eddy County.
Knowles was a frontier city by 1910, and freight wagons drawn by as many as 12 mules hitched in tandem, moved almost night and day across the Llano, transporting in supplies from the distant railroad at Midland. Hundreds of new settlers and ranchers and several years of good rains made Knowles a boomtown almost unprecedented on the Llano.
In a special May 1910 town-booster edition, the Knowles News reported the proposed building of a $4,500 school, another new bank and the limited irrigation of crops by the 'pumping plant system,' and went on to describe the city this way:
Knowles, the metropolis of the Plains, has: Auto lines connecting it with the Santa Fe at Carlsbad, N.M., and Artesia, N.M., and the T & P at Midland, Texas.
Knowles was becoming a city of fine tastes
and high expectations. It could boast of a tennis club, a 28-member
commercial club (forerunner of a chamber of commerce), which was working to
obtain a railroad, and the Knowles Dramatic Stock Company, made up of players
who had presented "The Mountain Waif" and
"Uncle Rube"
earlier in the season. "Under Two Flags", by Ouida was their next
production. Exclusive Gent's Furnishings owned by Henry Teague, offered
suits by Hart, Schaffner & Marx as well as a fine line of complete clothing
for men. Woodmen of the World met every first and third Tuesday on the
second floor of the First National Bank Building, while Red Man Hall served as
the city's cultural and social center where plays were staged and dances were
presented. Good grooming could be obtained in the two barbershops.
One was operated by Arthur Taylor and the other, the Wigwam, by Thomas E.
Blauvelt, who serve Knowles as U.S. Court Commissioner, notary public and agent
for fire, life, tornado and accident insurance. In the later salon, the
customer could obtain a hot bath in a real tub for 50 cents.
The city's many other services were impressive: A school system that served 135 pupils, the First National Bank with capital of $25,000, three churches (two Methodist and one Baptist), a building contractor firm run by G. O. Chance and specialists in real estate, Cartwright & Klebold and Jesse C. Reeves. Hotel Knowles, managed by Mrs. A. E. Thomas, offered the city a second restaurant and one of the best cuisines three times daily. Dr. H. W. Sellers** was one of the city's physicians, having taken the place of Dr. Deardruff, who had moved in 1907 to the Knowles area from Monument, and then in 1909 started a practice in the new village of Lovington. Another doctor was Charles Thomas.
** After leaving Knowles in 1912, Dr. Sellers moved to Otumwa, Iowa, where he practiced medicine until 1952 when he relocated to Tiger, Arizona, continuing his practice there. Later he practiced medicine in Tombstone, Arizona.
In Knowles of 1910, American culture had gained a foothold, however tenuous, and it is difficult to imagine that the people of the community thought of themselves as pioneers. Not far away to the northwest, Lovington was an infant village, while to the southwest Monument was already at the high point of its growth as a town. The frontier still held the Llano firmly in its grasp. Reminders of it were everywhere. In Knowles, the streets were unpaved, although individuals such as businessmen and rancher Allen Heard and Dr. H. W. Sellers owned the first few automobiles in the community. There were no sidewalks and windmills pumping into water troughs were scattered over the city to supply horses and mules, still the main means of transportation.
The people who made up Knowles and its environs were a diverse lot. They had their beginnings in almost every part of the nation, and most, in some way were still associated with ranch and farming interests while they were involved in a business in the city. Nearly all of them filed homestead claims, and almost all were multi-talented, having several skills to see them through, or make them successful, under frontier pressures.
Knowles, Lea County, New Mexico
Knowles, Lea County, New Mexico
