History of Hillsboro, New Mexico

From Historic Hillsboro, a Walking Tour Guide

Author and date unknown

Hillsboro, New Mexico, developed as a mining community. It sprang up in 1877, nine miles from the Kingston fields, when prospectors Dave Stitzel, Daniel Dugan, and Joe Yankie found a series of gold deposits. Some reports indicate that the community's name was drawn from a hat, others that it was named after Yankie's home of Hillsborough, Ohio, and that Main Street was originally Yankie Avenue. Stitzel served as the community's first justice of the peace. Given the American tendency to simplify spellings, Hillsborough was changed to Hillsboro. The tent city soon contained 300 miners, assorted store owners, and some women and children. By 1880 the town had four saloons, four grocery stores, and a post office. Outlaws and Apaches both raided the miners, and accordingly soldiers and militiamen were stationed in the little town. As the area grew more settled, adobe or wooden structures began to replace the tents. When Sierra County was created in 1884, Hillsboro became its seat. Although it was smaller than nearby Kingston, Hillsboro was out of the Black Range mountains and closer to the railroad station at Nutt. Hillsboro soon began to develop a more diversified economy, with lawyers locating near the county seat, and some ranchers settling in the rolling hills and plains near the town and east of the Black Range.

Hillsboro's citizens expected growth. A town plat was filed in 1887 with enough blocks to hold at least twice the town's population. The new community quickly developed a commercial and hotel center along Main and Broadway just west of the Percha Creek. To the east of the Percha, Hillsboro's Hispanic district developed, a small gardening area called Happy Flats. The commercial district contained a number of small shops, a bank, the town's first jail, and several small hotels. Further west along Main Street some more shops developed. Hillsboro's more prosperous citizens, predominantly but not entirely Anglo, lived in the area west of the commercial district.

The community gradually settled down. While early County Commissioner's reports indicated that Hillsboro had so many criminals it was necessary to ship them to distant jails, the amount of local crime diminished. In 1892 the citizens of Hillsboro erected a substantial brick courthouse and the multi-denominational Protestant Union Church, both on the hill south of the commercial center. In 1899, the town served as the site for the famous trial involving Oliver Lee, the accused murderer of Col. Albert Fountain. Lee's defense attorney, Albert Bacon Fall, later gained notoriety for his involvement in the Teapot Dome scandal while serving as Secretary of the Interior in the Harding Administration. Partisans of the prosecution and defense set up rival tent cities on the edge of town, while a Western Union telegraph line was installed to the town to cover the trial.

Despite some mining reverses apparently linked to the Panic of 1893, Hillsboro had become a substantial community by the early 1900's. It had several boarding houses and hotels. One was owned by the same man who owned the principal stage line, J.W. Orchard. His wife, Sadie, was a retired madam who soon returned to her old profession, servicing both miners and salesmen who came to the bustling community. Hillsboro was hurt by mining depressions, but unlike neighboring Kingston it had a sufficiently diversified economy to weather these storms. Natural disasters had a great effect on the town. A major fire on December 29, 1904, leveled the Union Hotel, the town's largest, and seriously damaged the commercial area. The town's commercial center shifted to Main and Second. Floods from the merging forks of the Percha represented another hazard. These floods damaged the east end of the town, nearly eliminating the Happy Flats area. A particularly bad flood hit the town in June 1914. It was followed by an influenza epidemic in 1918. Other communities competed for the Sierra County seat. Hillsboro beat off an effort by Hot Springs to win the seat in 1920. Nonetheless, an economic decline began to set in. Drought and ranching failures after 1922 brought down the main bank in 1925, while the Depression hurt the whole country. Hillsboro's new high school, built in 1923, began to lose pupils. Although prominent New Mexicans like retired Governor Curry or novelist Eugene Manlove Rhodes spent considerable time in Hillsboro, Sierra County increasingly came to the conclusion that Hillsboro was a dying, out-of-the-way community. In 1936, a referendum to transfer the seat to Hot Springs passed. Many professional families promptly left the town.

Yet, Hillsboro did not wither. Since the town had pleasant old buildings and a relatively cool summer climate, it changed to a retirement and summer vacation center. British diplomat Sir Victor Sassoon built a substantial home in the later 1930's, and gradually other retirees settled in the town. Hillsboro weathered another bad flood in 1972 and is today a retirement center with approximately one hundred fifty full-time residents.

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This page is maintained by Betty B. Reynolds in Hillsboro, New Mexico
Created September 24, 2004; last edited March 10, 2006
© 2006 B.B. Reynolds