Old Lea County, N.M.

Tag: jal

  • Jal Becomes a City, 1950

    Governor’s Proclamation

    [Transcribed from the Jal Record, Jal, New Mexico, 27 Apr 1950.]

    This proclamation, made, issued and published this 24th day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and fifty, by the undersigned, Thomas J. Mabry, governor of the State of New Mexico, that:

    Whereas, on 6th day or February, 1950, the incorporated town of Jal, Lea County, New Mexico, by resolution duly enacted expressed the desire through its board of trustees, to apply to the governor of the state or New Mexico to make, issue and publish a proclamation of the fact that the said town desires and is entitled to become a city as provided by section 14-317 and 14-318 New Mexico statutes annotated 1941 compilation, and

    Whereas, the mayor of said town of Jal was designated by the said board of trustees to act as chairman for the purpose of making a sworn statement showing the facts and matters required by law to be stated in such application, and

    Whereas, the said chairman, by sworn statement and with the unanimous approval of the said board of trustees and with the attestation of the town clerk, did state and show following facts, to-wit:

    l. That the name of the proposed city is the City of Jal.

    2. That the boundaries of the proposed city and the lands to included therein as shown by the attached plat are as follows:

    Jal townsite: Section 17, 18, 19, 20, 29 and 30, township 25th south, range 37 east, Lea county, New Mexico.

    Beginning at the southeast corner of Jal townsite said said point being the southeast corner of said section 29, thence west along the south boundary of said section 29 and 30 a distance or 8940.0 feet to the southwest corner of said townsite, thence north to a distance of 9355.9 feet, thence north 19 degrees and 46 minutes east a distance of 688.5 feet to the northwest corner of said townsite, thence south 89 degrees and 52 minutes east along the north boundary of said section 18 a distance of 1321,2 feet to the common corner between said section 17 and 18 and section 7 and 8, said township and range, thence north 89 degrees and 37 minutes east along the north boundary of said section 17 a distance of 5280.0 feet to the northeast corner of said section 17 and the northeast corner of said townsite, thence south 0 degrees and 02 minutes east along the east boundary of said 17, 20 and 29 a distance of 15840.0 feet to the point of beginning, containing 3075.44 acres, more or less.

    3. That the center of said proposed city as heretofore established by the Board of trustees of the town of Jal is as follows:

    Commencing at the point where the NE corner of the SE 1/4 of section 19, and the NW corner of the SE 1/4, section 20, township 25 south, range 37 east N. M. P. M, coincide for a point of beginning, which point is the center of the proposed city of Jal.

    4. That the boundaries of said proposed city do not exceed one and one half miles from the center of the proposed city as set forth above.

    That the estimated assessed valuation of all property within the limits of said proposed city as shown the official record of Lea county is $595,203.00.

    6. That the population of the proposed city is in excess of 2000.

    7. That the town of Jal is entitled to become and desires to become a city.

    NOW, therefore, in accordance with the laws in this case made and provided, and the power vested in me as governor of the state of New Mexico, the said town of Jal be, and is hereby proclaimed to be a city, to be designated as the City of Jal, with all the powers, privileges, duties and the liabilities of the cities in the State of New Mexico, and that the lands, areas and territory hereinabove described be, and the same are hereby declared be within the corporate limits and jurisdiction of the said city of Jal, and that this proclamation shall be conclusive evidence of all the facts herein contained and recited.

    In witness whereof I have hereunto affixed by official signature on the day and year this proclamation first above written.

    Thomas J. Mabry, Governor of the State of New Mexico

    Attest: Alicia Romero, Secretary of State

  • Pooch Saves Baby

    On January 26 at 3 o’clock, Marilyn Janet Justis, 2, was playing in her yard with Mr. K. B. Walker’s dog, Pooch. A few minutes later she wandered away and fell into an empty cess pool. Pooch howled and danced around the mouth of the hole until he attracted the attention of Marilyn’s mother, Mrs. D. W. Justis.

    With the help of a man who happened to be passing, Mrs. Justis rescued her daughter from the cess pool.

    [Jal Flare, Jal, New Mexico. 6 Feb 1947.]

    [Note: Marilyn Janet Justis was the granddaughter of Charles W. Justis, one of the earliest residents of the area around Jal and usually considered to be the founder of Jal.]

  • Clyde D. Woolworth and the Woolworth Family

    Clyde Dean Woolworth (1883-1938) was the first member of the family to come to Lea County. He was born to a large family in Carthage, Panola County, Texas. His father was Justus Morgan Woolworth and his mother was Mary Jane Paxson Woolworth. Clyde was one of at least eight children.

    The family story is that Clyde and his sister Elizabeth and learned of land that could be homesteaded from an article in a Dallas, Texas newspaper. They came to the area in 1915, after statehood but before the county was to be created in 1917. Clyde and Elizabeth each homesteaded a half section of land and it is said that they built their home where their property adjoined, partly on each other’s land.

    The siblings were later joined by three other sisters, Martha, Litie and Clara. Their property was the nucleus of the Woolworth Ranch near Jal, New Mexico. Finding a reliable and plentiful water source was always an issue in the area. The family told of facing the usual pioneer hardships including extreme weather, rattlesnakes but managed to remain. Oil was later discovered on their property.

    After an illness of several months, Clyde died at the age of fifty-five in 1938 while residing in San Angelo, Texas. Mr. Woolworth was a single man and is buried in San Angelo, Texas. He was survived by five of his sisters: Clara, Litie, Mae and Elizabeth Woolworth, all of San Angelo, and Mrs. Claudia Woolworth Watkins of Henderson, Texas, one brother, Dr. Joseph Dean Woolworth of Louisiana; and was predeceased by one brother, James G. Woolworth and one sister, Martha Woolworth.

    The Woolworth family is noted for having donated funds to found the Jal Library.

    Sources include various newspaper articles and the Summer, 2010 edition of The Lea County Tradition, a periodical.

  • Founding of Jal

    [Transcribed from the 60th Anniversary Collector’s Edition of the Lea County Fair and Rodeo program for the event held August 5-12, 1995]

    The Cowden Brothers had operated the vast JAL Ranch since 1886 coming from Palo Pinto County, Texas. The lure of shallow water and good grass led to their coming to the Monument Draw bringing cattle branded with the JAL brand. They established waterings about every ten miles up the draw. Spencer Jowell, Gene Cowden, Autry Moore, and Stumpy Roundtree all ran the New Mexico Cowden Ranch at one time. The last foreman before the company closed out in 1915 was Bob Beverly. Settlers began to pour into the area to claim their homesteads as they learned of the grass and shallow water. Some of them would later sell out as they realized the isolation of the area because of vast sands and the impossibility of dry land farming. These homesteaders sold out and moved.

    The founder of Jal was Charles W. Justis, a Southern gentleman who arrived before 1910 and opened his mercantile business six miles east of the present city of Jal. On July 6, 1910 he was granted authority to open his post office. To obtain his permit, his sons had to carry the mail from Kermit (25 miles) three months for no charge. As Justis determined a site more suitable to his store existed, he moved his business to the present site of Jal in 1916.

    The fall of 1912 saw the first school for Jal with about 14 students. The lumber was hauled from Midland for building the 12×14 oneroom school house. Leroy Lancaster was the first teacher and he soon married his student Buna Justis, Charles’s daughter. As the number of pupils grew, Eddy County purchased a larger building twenty miles away in Texas and the patrons had to move the structure over the sands to the new site three miles east of the present school.

    The drought hit this area very hard and many settlers either moved away or were forced to leave their families and find work elsewhere. The school closed but Justis’ store and post office remained. The school hung on with Martha Woolworth Knowles as teacher for the few pupils.

    For the next decade, life in Jal centered around the various ranches where neighbors gathered for musicals and dances, barbeques and visiting. West of Jal the Charlie Goedeke home was a gathering place and on the East was the Knight place where Mrs. Knight would play the piano and the French harp. Some of the other settlers of the area were Charlie and Jim Dublin the Buffingtons, Billy and Mont Beckham and Alfred Perry Easton.

    The exploration and discovery of oil and gas made major changes in the small settlement of Jal. On November 1, 1927, The Texas Company brought in the Rhodes No. 1 six miles southeast of Jal and in June 1928 Continental Oil Company brought in Eaves No. 1 and Jal became Lea County’s first oil and gas boom town.

    With the influx of speculators, drilling crews and construction workers came the tents and shacks and formation of two townsite companies that were in competition. The Hubbs-Justis Townsite Company took in north Jal and the Jal Townsite Company formed by Floyd Stuart, Richard Herwig, and Clyde Woolworth took in the southern area. The Herwig Company became the area where most of Jal developed. The depression hit and crude oil prices fell along with Jal’s prosperity, but El Paso Natural Gas Company came in 1931 with gas gathering lines to provide employment that was to prove a stable force in Jal for years to come.

    By 1935, Jal had four service stations, two dry goods stores, two drug stores, three lumber yeards and even a movie theater. The Woolworth Hotel was in operation and served meals. New Mexico Electric Company came in 1935 and a telephone system of sorts was operating. In 1935, Dr. J. L. Burke was superintendent of schools and a four year high school started. The Jal Record owned by Floy Wynn was founded in 1950. Dr. Burke purchased the Herwig Townsite Company and donated land for church building sites. Jal was on its way to becoming the “Gas Capital” of the country.

  • Samuel Rose Cooper, Early Settler

    Samuel R. Cooper was an early resident of Lea County. He was born near Salina, Kansas in 1874. When he was six years old, his family moved to Erring Springs, in the Chickasaw Nation, Oklahoma Territory, now known as Oklahoma.

    As a young adult around the age of 21, Mr. Cooper left his family and moved west to Mobeetie, Texas in the Panhandle. He worked on several ranches including the XIT ranch. He also recalled hunting prairie chickens and sending them to markets in Kansas City and St. Louis, Missouri. When he was 27, he married the former Jessie May Gray and the young couple moved to a farm near Mobeetie and supplemented his income by cutting wood and transporting it by ox teams. He also hauled and sold cottonseed cake to ranches int he area.

    In 1914, two years after New Mexico became a state, Mr. Cooper sold his Panhandle farm and moved to the area. He homesteaded a half section located roughly ten miles northwest of the area that would give rise to the town of Jal and later added another half section to his homestead holdings. His brothers and father were already residing in New Mexico. Mr. Cooper built a one room house with a dirt floor early on, and lived there for a few years before building a more substantial home. The first three years they were in the area, they had to rely on water which they hauled from Mr. Cooper’s father’s property, but in 1917 they were able to drill their own well and set up a windmill to provide their water supply.

    At that time, a one room schoolhouse served the community children and also provided a place for community gatherings and Sunday School meetings each Sunday morning.

    After some time, the Coopers set up a post office with Mrs. Cooper serving as post mistress. They later established a small mercantile store near their home, supplying it with goods freighted in from Pecos, Texas. The goods were transported by two large wagons in tandem, pulled by a team of twenty burros.

    Oil was discovered in Jal around 1929, and Mr. Cooper recalls that all structures, including barns and chicken houses were converted to housing for oilfield workers. One additional benefit of the oil boom was that Mr. Cooper then was able to get natural gas service to his home where he previously only had wood and kerosene for home use.

    Mr. Cooper passed away in 1958 at the age of 84. He had lived in Lea County for forty-four years. His services were held and the Church of God in Jal, of which he was a charter member. He was buried in the Jal-Cooper Cemetery on land that he donated. His wife Jessie survived him another eighteen years. He and Jessie had eight children, four sons and four daughters, all of whom survived him along with 29 grandchildren and 17 great grandchildren.

  • The Cowden Family

    Four brothers, W. H. “Bill” Cowden, George Cowden, John M. Cowden and Buck Cowden came to the area in the mid 1880s and settled with their wives and children near what became the town of Jal. The men drove their combined cattle while the women drove wagons. Water sources were found by digging wells. Their ranch was called the Mule Shoe Ranch and had its headquarters at what became the Jal town site.

    Their father was William Hamby Cowden (1826-1903). According to federal census records, in 1850, he was twenty-five years old, living in Alabama. By 1860, he was thirty-five years old, living in Palo Pinto, Texas. That same year, he married Caroline Martha Liddon (1832-1879). During the Civil War, he served in Company A of the Frontier Battalion under Captain William C. Clayton. Though it was considered part of the Confederate Army, it essentially served as a local militia, protecting settlers primarily from the native tribes. To the best of our knowledge, it never left the state of Texas. Cowden enlisted in September 1865 for an initial period of six months and during the time of his service, he rose to the rank of sergeant.

    William Hamby Cowden and Caroline Martha Liddon Cowden had a number of children, including Bill, George, John and Buck Cowden. Caroline, known as Carrie, passed away in Palo Pinto in 1879 at the age of 47. The following year, William Hamby Cowden married her sister, Catherine Cobb “Kittie” Liddon Moore who had recently become a widow after the death of her first husband, Robert Young Moore, back in Tennessee in 1876. Kittie and Robert had been married a number of years and had several children including Hattie Lucille Moore, who would become the wife of Ambrose Quincy Cooper of Jal, and Lillie Parham Moore, who would become the wife of John Motherwell Cowden. Though it is not as complicated as it might sound, when Kittie Liddon Moore married William Hamby Cowden, Lillie’s mother became her mother in law. William Hamby Cowden and Kittie do not seem to have lived in New Mexico, but eventually resided in Midland, where they were living when they both passed away.

    Bill, George, John and Buck all were married and lived in the Jal area at least for a while before moving away, but their property was conveyed to Walter C. Cochran and others and eventually became the core of the town of Jal. Hattie Lucille Moore Cooper mentioned in a newspaper article that Walter C. Cochran became her brother in law. Mr. Cochran married yet another sister of Lillie and Hattie Lucille named Nannie Dodson Moore.

  • Joe Cooper Recalls Youth In Jal Area

    Memories of the days when he first came to Lea County were revived by The Jal Flare‘s special edition in Joe Cooper, who lives ten miles north of Jal.

    He came here in ’10 from Pyote, Texas with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. James M. Cooper, and has lived in this area for the last twenty-eight years.

    When they first arrived, they had to haul water six or seven miles, Mr. Cooper recalled, from what is known as the west wells (now Jal). But the four boys and the father soon had a house built and a well drilled.

    “Those were rough days,” Mr. Cooper said, “but still they were the sweetest of my childhood. I couldn’t see it then, but now I can realize it.”

    When the time came to drive the look back through the years and and stock to water, it fell to Joe’s lot to climb aboard the burrow and round them up. It usually took him all day, since the horses were wild.

    Sickness of two of his brothers also threw a hardship on Joe during those early days, as there was a great deal of work to be done.

    [Jal Flare, Jal, NM. 30 Mar 1939.]

  • Ranchers and Water

    From the Jal Flare, Jal, NM. 7 Mar 1939:

    Here’s a story which amply illustrates how ranchers felt about water here in the early days. When Walter C. Cochran dug the first water well in this area, at the hackberry trees which are now Hubbs and Justis Water Company, he found water, the farthest west and the last this side of the Pecos River.

    Years later in describing his reaction:

    “I was happier at finding water than any man ever was at finding oil.”

  • Walter Colquitt Cochran

    Walter Cochran was born August 14, 1952 in Georgia to Col. Winston W. Cochran and the former Mary Dickson. His family is believed to have moved to Texas when he was still an infant. He married Nannie Dodson in the 1880s.

    Walter C. Cochran came to Jal in 1883 from Palo Pinto County in North Central Texas. He moved his cattle from the JAL ranch in the spring of 1885. According to a 1939 article in the Jal Flare, his cattle were already branded with the Muleshoe brand, so he named the ranch the Muleshoe Ranch.

    He had become acquainted with the area by hearing stories of his friends the Cowdens, also of Palo Pinto. When he first came to New Mexico, he set up his cattle ranching operation further east but relocated to what became the townsite of Jal.

    Mr. Cochran lived in the area until 1893 after which he moved his ranching operation to around Midland, Texas. He was remembered as being a local favorite for his witty and droll demeanor. Considered to be very knowledgeable, he was sought out by younger ranchers for advice.

    Mr. Cochran died of natural causes on October 31, 1934 while living in Midland, Texas and is buried there in Fairview Cemetery. His wife Nannie survived him until 1940 and is also buried there.

  • Oil Discovery in Jal

    On March 7, 1939, the Jal Flare contained an article that recounted the first oil wells in the area. The first discovery well was a wildcat, the Rhodes #1. Drilled in 1927 by Donley Brothers it produced a gas and sweet oil well that flowed mostly gas and some oil. It was quickly followed by Continental Oil Comapny’s Eaves well, south of town and the Shoals wells. Skelly then struck oil on the Joiner lease.

    This led to a boom and Jal grew in response. Drilling activity declined over the next few years and population declined until there was another boom of sorts beginning in 1936, when Roy Stovall and Culbertson and Irwin brought in a well in the Jal Sand Area. A dry hole by Phillips was followed by this offset well. The article described the pays on the east side of town as being in sand and on the west being in limestone.

    The article concluded by commenting that the discovery of oil was expected to lead to continued growth as surrounding exploratory wells are drilled.