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Graciously compiled by
Don McAlavy, Clovis Historian
"The Beginnings"
When Clovis was founded in 1907 by the Santa Fe Railroad
the law was the sheriff of Roosevelt County, a county that stretched up to
the southern
boundary of Quay County. Both of these counties had been organized in
1903. Clovis was a railroad town established when the railroad built their
Belen Cutoff from Texico to Belen, N.M. The railroad's townsite company
laid out the streets and the railroad furnished security for the railroad
construction gang building the roundhouse, shops, depot, etc. The railroad
oversaw the development of this new town and furnished what "law" was
necessary.
In 1908, less than a year after Clovis had been decreed a town and had
elected it first governing body, the Governor of New Mexico, under due
process of law, ordered and decreed that Clovis be declared a City. Five
trustees were elected, one of them being the head of the railroad's
townsite
company. They then began the tedious task of writing ordinances under
which the town would be governed. Within two years after the town was
formed the most active and influential businessmen of Clovis went to Santa
Fe, N.M. to petition Governor George Curry for a new county. They were
successful, after promising the governor the county would be named after
him. In a following election Clovis beat out three other small towns in
the area and became the county seat. The governor appointed county office
holders and a sheriff, C. H. Hannum.
The trustees of the City of Clovis, in June of 1909, six months after
Curry
County was organized, finally got around to putting some ordinances in
force. Ordinance No. 12 provided for the appointment of two city marshals
whose expressed duties, said our first historian, the late Tom Pendergrass,
"covered everything from arresting criminals to changing the baby."
Ordinance No. 39 passed on April 27, 1911, outlawed brothels and bawdy
houses, which, in 1978, Tom Pendergrass said, "was still on the books."
The late Dr. I. D. Johnson, a long time dentist in Clovis, remembered the
first law officers here, being a young boy growing up in this exciting new
town. "First there was Frank Ivy who rode a gray horse up and down Main
Street. He wore a big high crowned hat and a handle-bar mustache with his
"Chihuahua" spurs that jingled; he looked like a law man. Course they were
called 'Marshals.' Next came Dick Moye, rather slender in build and a
quiet
appearance. He rode a tall sorrel horse, but not on Main Street. He hated
gamblers and one day he shot too quick." (Dr. Johnson never did explain
what he mean by saying "he shot too quick." It could have been he shot an
"important gambler" and was fired.)
"Then there was Doug Hammond (some spelled it "Dug"). He came over from
Melrose after the railroad gave up on Melrose and chose the site of Clovis
for their roundhouse, etc. He was a rancher, a good man with a gun, very
robust with a powerful build, standing about six-foot two. He not only was
a marshal in Clovis but a fireman as well.
"The biggest man of all was Finis A. Sadler. The Clovis News, on Jan. 1914
printed: 'he was six feet and nine inches tall and weighed 230 pounds,
with no fat.' He made his arrests without help. Finis Sadler died at age
86 in
1949.
Continued
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