Old House 77

Solano, NM

Eastern New Mexico is a virtual museum of vernacular architecture, spanning from 1900 to 1940. There are several reasons for this, the first and most obvious, is the homesteading boom of the early 20th century, when tens of thousand of people, hoping for a new start, moved into the region. Then, due to draught, depression, and the ruinously small size of the homesteads, most of them left, leaving the towns and rural landscape full of surplus housing.
     Much of the housing remained because it was solidly built and suited to the region. Adobe, and its modern child stucco, is cool in the summer and warm in the winter, keeping out the high winds so common to the area. The fact that the land remained inexpensive, and the property taxes low, meant there was no reason to demolish the abandoned buildings. Many of them were consolidated into larger ranches and used for storage, or kept by family members out of sentimental reasons ("the old homestead"), or simple inertia.
     The romantic notion that the whole place is abandoned is untrue, a huge number of the structures are occupied. In towns such as Clovis, Tucumcari, and Roswell a very large portion of houses date from the old boom days. My first house in Tucumcari featured 12" adobe walls in a stucco frame, the overly soft bricks most likely dug out of Tucumcari Mountain itself. The house I live in now, nestled quietly in a post-apocalyptic block of Clovis, NM is built like a fort and as snug as can be.
     Sadly, many of these places are falling apart, uncared for by predatory landlords who just want to make a fast buck. Others are owned by poor people who can't afford to stabilize the sagging foundations. (New Mexico may be the Land of Enchantment, but it's not a land of riches.) Often, the houses are literally splitting in half because the piers are rotting. But many of them, such as the one pictured above, have been lived in, and cared for, over the past century, often upgraded several times over. If I put together a list of the old houses around here that I would like to live in, it would be as long as your arm.
     While it would be impractical to save every old house, they are what give the region its character. Nobody visits Tucumcari to tour the Kmart, they come to see vintage Americana. My hope is that Eastern New Mexico keeps enough of the old places to retain that character for generations to come.