Preserving and exhibiting the rich history of Lea County and the surrounding areas of Eastern New Mexico and West Texas
About the Lea County Museum
Year-round collection of programs and exhibits highlighting the history of Lea County.
Learn MoreIt may not have been how every participant would have described it, but one serious runner said the inaugural Lea…
Learn MoreThese photos were taken on the base while it was active.Photos by: Midred Schutz
Learn MoreLister Building Second Floor This exhibit displays photos and memorabilia of musical artists and bands from Lea County and musicians…
Learn MoreLarge meeting space for dances, lectures, and other gatherings. 114 E. CentralOriginal name of building: 1928 Johnson Store
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“Jim Harris has written a telling piece of literature that encompasses the 50s and 60s, sometimes before those dates and sometimes after, in a low key/high interest method I’ve not encountered before….The story is not linear through the years. It zig zags. One time, he is a child remembering; at another he is a teen and at another he is grown. He is a reader beginning with the reference to Poe. By the end he is a college man familiar…
$20
Learn MoreWith antidotes, newspaper articles, association minutes, advertisements and photographs Harris and Minton provide a timeline in Lea County, New Mexico; from the late 1800’s when buffalo hunters settled at Monument Spring and the first ranches were established, through the first rodeos held at local ranches to the establishment of the Lea County Fair and Rodeo and the Open Range Cowboy Association in the 1900’s, and into the new 21st century sharing the stories of the men and women who have…
$10.00
Learn More"This book is intended as a tribute and is gratefully dedicated to the authors of the following articles and stories. These are the men and women who took the time to write down their experiences and the experiences of their families and neighbors. It is through them that we know our past. A past unrecorded is soon erased by time. Thanks to these writers, significant fragments of our history have been recorded and are preserved. Through their writings, we can,…
$15.00
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Jim Harris A shoebox full of history: American Soldiers in the Pacific, Pre-WW I. Last week I had a brief visit with an old friend from my days at New Mexico Junior College when she brought a shoebox full of history from her home in Hobbs. Elaine Richeson came up to the Lea County Museum with her daughter Melody to donate to the museum two World War II Navy uniforms that had belonged to her late husband Doyle. Elaine’s father-in-law,…
Jim Harris Caudill Family: Those Days in the West, Life Went Right On When I have thought of the Caudill family in the history of Lea County, I have usually remembered the much-circulated 1909 photograph of three Caudill family members who came out west into New Mexico from Texas in the first years of the 20thcentury and helped establish the town of Lovington. The photo is of the brothers John, James, and Emory Caudill. They are sporting western beards and mustaches,…
Jim Harris People in Our Lives: Homer Johnson Dies in 1957 Working at the Lea County Museum of history, art, folklore, and regional culture, I know that I am likely to have moments each day when I pause and linger over an experience among the hundreds of artifacts from earlier times. Perhaps I am sitting beside a chair that belonged to a person who helped create the town of Lovington in 1908. Or I am walking down a second-story hallway…