Category: smaller communities

Benjamin Lewis “Ben” Knowles came to the area about 1903 or 1904 from Mills County, Texas and claimed land. In and around it grew up a settlement that is believed to be the second oldest (after Monument) in the area that later became Lea County in 1917. Knowles was in his late 60s when he came to New Mexico and his wife Mary Hulda was a few years younger. Mrs. Knowles died in 1907 and Mrs. Knowles survived her until 1925 when he died on a trip to visit relatives in central Texas. The town was not more than about five miles west of the Texas border. According to “Place Names of New Mexico” it went by the name Oasis, at least for a while. At its peak is believed to have had as many as 500 residents. It had at one time several stores, a bank, hotel, newspaper office, wagon yard and other businesses.

Knowles had its own post office from 1903 to 1944. Once oil was discovered in Hobbs in the late 1920s the residents began to drift away in favor of Hobbs and New Hobbs to the south and Lovington to the north. There was some mention of a fire in the town at some point. Whatever the reasons, none of the original buildings are thought to still survive.

The community of Caprock is located just inside the northwestern border of the county. It takes its name for the geological formation that is found in southeastern New Mexico where to the east, the surface is flat while to the west it drops off rapidly. West of Caprock, the surface descends to the Pecos river. Caprock is located just under 25 miles northwest of Tatum and 47 miles roughly due east of Roswell on Highway 380.

Charles E. “Ed” Crossland is credited for having founded the settlement in 1913 and serving as its first postmaster. (1) The 1920 census showed Crossland, his wife Lillian and son Ed, Jr. living there and his profession was listed as farmer. In 1930 Crossland and his family still resided there and his profession was listed as being a teamster for the state highway department while Ed. Jr. listed his as being a wheat farmer. Charles passed away in 1948 in Roswell at the age of 67 and is buried at South Park Cemetery. His wife Lillian survived him over thirty years, remarried and died in California. Ed Crossland Jr. remained in the Roswell area where he lived with his family.

“The cap, or hard layer, underlying the Llano Estacado is a major geological feature known as the Caprock. It is not a rock layer in the usual sense of the term but is more technically a “hard-pan” layer that developed a few feet below the ground as highly mineral subsoil particles cemented themselves together to form a rock-like layer that resists erosion. Although the name Caprock technically applies only to the formation itself, the expression is often loosely used to mean the whole Llano Estacado. The Caprock escarpment was formed by erosion about one million to two million years ago.” (Excerpt from https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/caprock)

(1) Julyan, Robert, “The Place Names of New Mexico,” University of New Mexico Press, 1998.