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CountyHistory
Charles AdolphusScheurich,
Grandson of Governor. Charles Bent, first civil governor of New Mexico, and
grand-nephew of Kit Carson, almost single-handedly ,
was responsible for the creation of CurryCounty, carving from the eastside
counties of Roosevelt and Quay, in 1909, a 40 x 45 mile expanse of flat,
semi-arid, high plains land devoid of mountains, trees, and rivers. It was
named for Governor George Curry, on February 25, 1909. Clovis,
New Mexico is the county seat.
Tom Pendergrass, a noted Clovis Historian, recalled in his own words the
story as told to him by Scheurich: "We sat out
here in the middle of the baldies with nothing but jackrabbits and antelopes
and not a friend in the world. It was late in the year of 1908 when Clovis
decided they'd go for a county. The two bank factions got together and somehow
raised four hundred dollars to send a man to Santa Fe,
New Mexico to try to get the county. They
picked out a man that was the most likely to be known in Santa
Fe, Uncle Charley C. A. Scheurich.
He was a very close friend of the then governor of the territory, George Curry.
Two other men went with him: Frank P. Helm and R. E. Rowells.
It was already known that when Charley Scheurich
got up to Santa Fe and told the Governor about his mission to get a new county,
that it would be named after him, Curry County. Of course this move cinched the
Governor on Charley's side. At the time the bill passed Governor Curry was in Washington.
Charley Scheurich, knowing a lot of people in Santa
Fe as he did, managed to get hold of that bill after it had gone through due
process and he fliched it. At this time is was not unheard of for a bill to get lost in the Santa
Fe mill. Charlie did nothing crooked. He just located
the bill, put it in his pocket after it had been
processed through the House and the Senate and brought it back to Clovis
with him. After Governor Curry returned from Washington,
Charley entrusted the bill to B. F. Craig and another friend and they returned
it to Santa Fe for the Governor's
signature."
The story of man in CurryCounty begin
several thousand years prior to Charles Scheurich's
entry onto the scene. The record of man in the immediate area extends backward
at least 12, 000 years to the Llano culture of the Paleo-Indians
who hunted the huge mammoth and other animals. Archeological findings in the Blackwater Draw near the Curry-Roosevelt county line have
traced man from the Llano
culture (Clovis Man) through the Folsom culture of 9,000 to 10,000 years
ago
Cowmen were the first permanent settlers in present CurryCounty. They chose the semi-shallow
draws which were watered by a few springs to dig dug-outs: later erecting rock
homes and barns, letting their longhorn cattle drift over the open range.
Before 1900 this region belonged to the stockmen, but the short lived open
range period in CurryCounty
was over with the first influx of homesteaders between 1901 and 1903. The
opening up of this area to farmers came with the construction of the Belen
Cut-Off by the Santa Fe Railroad
between 1903 and 1907.
(Governor George Curry served 1907-1910, deceased.)
(Thomas N. Pendergrass, Clovis Historian, deceased.)
HOW THE ORPHANTOWN
OF CLOVIS FINALLY GOT A COUNTY,
Edited by Don McAlavy. Published in
The Greater Llano Estacado Southwest Heritage, Vol 2, No. 4, December 1972.
