Sally Chisum Robert "First Lady of Artesia" (1858-1936)

Eddy County · US 82 -- mile marker between mile markers 110 and 112 -- Artesia · location approximate

Sallie was 19 when she arrived from Texas at her Uncle John Chisum’s Jinglebob Land and Livestock Company ranch south of Roswell. Her ranching skills rivaled those of the cowboys she joined driving cattle up her uncle’s Goodnight-Loving Trail to Colorado. She and her second husband opened the first post office and reading room in what became Artesia. Her landholdings are part of Artesia’s original townsite and include the site of her cast-stone house where she raised many orphans. It is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Some of her diaries are preserved at the Artesia Historical Museum and Art Center. They include entries about her uncle, Billy the Kid, the Regulators, and the Lincoln County War.

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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.

Sally Chisum Robert "First Lady of Artesia" (1858-1936)

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