Harding County, NM

Northeastern New Mexico

Welcome to Harding County, NM

Mesa Hotel
Mosquero, NM

He liked this New Mexico mesa better than any land which he had seen as a soldier and traveler to the Philippines or in Spain; better than Texas where he had been born, or Kansas where he had attended college, or Oklahoma where he had been admitted to the bar after law studies.

This energetic Brown, who could do many things well, began to dream of homesteads here where the flocks of grazing sheep now spread out over the grassland.  There must be many individuals who would grab the chance to file on land on this promising mesa if only they know about it.

He recalled his past brief experience in a real estate office in Wichita, Kansas and considered the possibilities of a claim-locating service as he rode home to the little settlement of Gould near the big Black Lake watering place.  Before he had come to the Black Lake Region in 1905, B.F. Brown had taught a term of school at the Albert plaza in the valley to the east where one of the pupils had been pretty Flevia Trujillo, whom he had married.

At Gould, his young wife's father, Eliseo Trujillo, and his family had a country store.  She was the postmistress.  Here, Ben Brown, among other activities, conducted a mail order business, shipping out cactus plants and amole (yucca root).  Presently he would start a new venture.

Very soon he was president of the Mosquero Land Company which advertised in the Kansas City Star for persons who wanted a home in the Land of Sunshine.  The overland mail from Roy to Gould increased with inquiries, and notices that "I'm on my way."

One of the first to arrive was H.T. Pittman who came in January 1908.  With his horse and buggy, Benjamin Brown showed attractive tracts to Pittman who was satisfactorily located on 160 acres, where he lived for 56 years until his death in January 1964.

Another early settler was W.T. Lofton, Pittman's neighbor, who brought his family and household goods with him in a covered wagon when he came to look.

It was not long after that the land company president located E.L. Fuller for $15 on a claim adjoining Pittman, and sold Fuller a needed team of native ponies for $70 because the man had lost his original team in a switch year accident in Oklahoma when he was on his way to New Mexico.

Prospects for arriving so fast that they became a problem.  There were too many each week for the family to take care of at Gould, and there were no accommodations nearby.

"We need a hotel for these landseekers," Brown decided.  "We could build it at the Mosquero railroad siding where it will be convenient for those who come on the train."

Already he had land there.  With  a carpenter book in his pocket, he went to see H.T. Pittman, who was willing to study and practice for some extra dollars.  W.T. Lofton was ready to help erect Mosquero's first building.

During the summer of 1908, sandstone rock was quarried and brought in from the canyons.  Lumber came for door and window frames.  A long, flat-roofed structure took shape.  As soon as it was ready, Brown moved in his wife and young son Alfred with the Trujillo family from Gould, to run the hotel.  The store and post office from Gould, renamed Mosquero, came too.

Meanwhile he had arranged with homesteader J.F. Smith to help lay out a townsite of almost fifty acres where the north and south streets were numbered, and the cross streets were called Brown, Main, Cedar Pine, and Downey.  The townsite was filed July 7, 1908.

Brown's brother Howard H. Brown, filed on land adjoining the townsite on the south, and got a job carrying the mail from the train to the post office, by foot.

Emelio Trujillo, young brother-in-law to the town father, opened a meat market with one quarter of beef.

Under Brown's enthusiastic influence, business was so brisk that the hotel soon had to be enlarged.  While Leonard Wood and Walter Goodhue were adding a frame second story and finishing the impressive hostel with a fine covered balcony which extended across two sides, Brown was in the territorial legislature plugging a bill to create Mosquero County, with his new town as the geographic and political center.

Although the measure failed, the legislator came home with eager interest to get a sign painted on the remodeled inn proclaiming, "Mesa Hotel, Rates $2.00," and to set a windmill over the well that would serve both the people and their livestock for many years (but which today is sealed beneath the pavement of Highway 39).  His second son, Benjamin Franklin Brown, Jr., had reached the walking age when he could be penned in the fenced flower garden in front of the hotel.

About this time, John Perry in Solano ceased publishing his "Solano Herald" and sold his printing press to B.F. Brown.  Brown hired Augustine Blea to construct a rock print shop in Mosquero and bargained with is wife's sister, Miss Aurelia Trujillo, to publish a newspaper titled "The Mosquero Sun", which he would edit.

By 1914, Mosquero had "four stores, a fine stone schoolhouse, a hotel, a restaurant, a newspaper, a real estate office, a meat market, two physicians, two saloons, etc."

In one of the saloons, a customer named Ernie Long shot and killed bartender Pablo Baca, and then turned hot gunfire on Deputy Sheriff Gentry from Clayton.  The wounded officer was carried to the hotel where Mrs. Eliseo Trujillo treated him while an ambulance was readied, but he died before they got him to Clayton.  Long was eventually sentenced to the penitentiary at Santa Fe, from which he escaped and was never apprehended.  Rumors say that he is still living under an assumed name.

As the occasion arose, Benjamin Brown practiced law.  Old timers still chuckle over a court scene concerning a fracas in a Model T. Ford, where attorney Brown asked his lady plaintiff, "Where did the defendant hit you?:" and she answered, "On the running board."

By 1920, there were 239 persons in Brown's town, and a family on almost every 320 acres.  The following year, his town achieved the long-sought goal of becoming the seat of county government.  In a second dedication, the letter S. was place din the town's name, so that it officially became "MOSQUERO" on January 21, 1921.

When the new county ceremonies were conducted later that year, Brown was appropriately included among the prominent officials present.  He was appointed by the first county commissioners to determine if there were sufficient individuals to incorporate the town.

A new survey was made, including the Howard Brown and McNeil Additions and Louise Tract which enlarged the plat to approximately 370 acres, with the west boundary running diagonally along the old Pablo Montoya Grant line.

When Mosquero was incorporated May 1, 1922, B.F. Brown's dream for his mesa town was fulfilled.  His land company had served its purpose.  He disposed of his holdings and moved with his family to Hawthorne, California, in 1923, where he promptly started a new real estate business.  But he never forgot the mesa or his experiences here.

Twenty-three years later, shortly before his death in 1946, he wrote with nostalgia in his "Judge Brown Says" column, published in a California newspaper, about amole, Nature's gift to primitive man for cleansing and of New Mexico's pinto beans and jerky.

His Mesa Hotel stands yet on Main Street in Mosquero, today occupied by the Mesa PX Trading Post. (2008-Note:  the buildings are no longer standing.)

Mrs. Brown and their two sons live in California.

Like Judge B.F. Brown, most of his homesteaders have also moved on to another mesa, but his town remains.  It is the county seat of Harding County.

Reprinted from New Mexico Magazine - April 1964. by Cee Savvy (Cecile Lunsford Crosthwait, '28)