Homesteading in New Mexico

In 1921, Otero-Warren ran for federal office, campaigning to be the Republican Party nominee for New Mexico to the US House of Representatives. She won the nomination, but lost the election by less than nine percent. She remained politically and socially active, and served as the Chairman of New Mexico’s Board of Health; an executive board member of the American Red Cross; and director of an adult literacy program in New Mexico for the Works Projects Administration.

Los Alamos National Laboratory was created to develop the atomic bomb. The government decided on Los Alamos County in New Mexico as a site for the Manhattan Project. Most of the land already belonged to the government as part of the Forest Service, but there was a community of Hispanic homesteaders and other property owners in the area. The homesteaders received less than their Anglo counterparts for their land. In 2005, they received reparations for the unfair treatment.

Cortez A. Hibler was born around 1879 in Falls County, Texas. He moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico around 1918 and was active in the community. At that time he remarried Lou Ella. Years later they filed for a homestead claim outside of the city on the East Mesa. Unfortunately, Cortez Hibler died before proving up the homestead claim, but his wife Lou Ella Hibler continued on and received a patent for the land on June 28, 1937.

At 21 years old Francis followed in his parent’s steps and filed for a homestead claim near Blackdom, New Mexico. While proving up on his homestead, Boyer was conscripted into the Army as a Private First Class and fought in WWI. He served from August 3, 1918 to July 17, 1919. Francis, his parents, and four of his brothers moved to Vado, New Mexico in the mid-1920s in hopes of creating a "black city" after Blackdom did not work out.

Francis (Frank) Marion Boyer was a community leader in Blackdom, New Mexico. Boyer and his family moved to New Mexico Territory in 1896 to escape the instability of Southern life. Boyer, a former Buffalo Soldier, arrived in the Pecos River Valley near the community of Roswell in 1898, where he worked in the courts. In partnership with thirteen original homesteaders, Boyer established and became president of the land speculation venture, the Blackdom Townsite Company.

Mattie Moore Wilson was one of the most notable entrepreneurs of Chaves County, New Mexico, during the early 20th century. She followed two quite different careers in the Chaves County. She was known as in Roswell as the owner of a brothel and in the homesteader community of Blackdom, she owned 640 acres of land.

Learn about Nina Otero-Warren and some of the places associated for her work towards women's suffrage in the early 1900s. This article includes places in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Chicago, Illinois.

Blackdom, New Mexico was the most important black homesteader colony in New Mexico. Located fifteen miles south of Roswell, Blackdom was incorporated by thirteen African Americans from Roswell, New Mexico, in 1903.