Carlsbad - New Mexico - History

25,000 B.C., its occupants were representatives of Sandia Man. Other nomadic hunters, including the Apache, followed hunting buffalo. Spanish explorers were next until the conquest by the United States which resulted in the Territory of New Mexico about 1850.

Western Texas cattlemen Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving in 1866 drove herds of cattle to sell in New Mexico and Colorado. They followed the Pecos River and forded it to go north at what is now Guadalupe Street in Carlsbad. The drovers observed the good cow country, began building adobe cabins and became pioneer ranchers.

Eddy was made the county seat in 1889, and farming activity flourished in the early 1890s. It collapsed, however, when the Pecos River flooded, ruining irrigation ditches, railroad tracks and dams. Pioneer ranchers began to move away. The next to arrive were hundreds of tubercular patients who lived in tents in this semi-arid climate.

In 1899 the name Eddy was changed to Carlsbad to emphasize the water flowing from a mineral spring, already called Carlsbad Springs. An aqueduct, "The Flume ," originally built of wood but rebuilt of concrete following the 1902 flood, is an elaborate irrigation system that carries Pecos River water from Lake Avalon across the river.

With the arrival of the railroad in 1891, the sheep and cattle market opened. Cotton and alfalfa were soon major crops. Potash was discovered in 1928 and drilling began in 1929. Soon production increased to hundreds of thousands of tons annually. That has tapered in recent years, and Carlsbad has become a major retirement area.

The city's fame is associated with Carlsbad Caverns, 20 miles south of Carlsbad. Discovered by James L. White in 1902, it did not flourish as a tourist attraction until 1920 when Carlsbad Caverns was designated a National Monument.