Blackdom Townsite

Chaves County · US 285 -- Roswell vicinity -- south of Roswell

West of this location stood the now abandoned community of Blackdom. The community was founded circa 1908 by Francis Marion Boyer and his wife Ella. Several dozen African American families homesteaded nearly 15,000 acres of land and built a self-sustaining community that boasted a general store and a Baptist Church. Officially platted in 1920, the community was eventually abandoned due to continued problems with irrigation from the distant Pecos River.

The Historic Preservation Division notes that its marker spreadsheet may be out of date and in places inaccurate, and that it does not know where every marker now stands. These pages carry the spreadsheet’s record; a marker listed here may have moved or may no longer stand. the program’s page ↗

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USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection

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under a mile from where William Gabby lived in the 1760s

what this marker records spans 1777 to 1789, overlapping William Gabby's years here

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Marker data: Official Scenic Historic Markers program, New Mexico Historic Preservation Division, Department of Cultural AffairsMarker texts come from the Division’s published marker spreadsheet, reproduced with the Division’s written permission. Where that spreadsheet records a coordinate, the pin is the Division’s own; where it records only a highway and mile marker, an address, a junction or a named place, or where its coordinate contradicts its own highway, mile and county, the pin is ours, resolved on public road and place data and marked approximate.

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