Hope, New Mexico

When I was a kid, I used to read the phonebook.

In the 70’s our form of communication with the outside world was the written word and the telephone. I was interested in people and their places, business, and church addresses. And most people had their phone number and address listed in the phone book. Our phone book in Hobbs, NM was about a half inch thick. That’s what I remember. It had white pages and yellow pages and I often paged through looking for people I knew.

As I write this, I’m also browsing the web looking for a phone book from that era and am unsuccessful. But I remember having a phone book for Lea County, Hobbs and Lovington and maybe Monument. There was also the town of Hope written on that cover. That’s what I remember. I didn’t know much about phone books back then or who determined what went in one especially the yellow pages and I do remember asking mom, “Where on Earth is Hope?” I’ve now made contact with a group who manage a page for Hope, NM. Let me ask.

I asked and this town was in the Eunice/Carlsbad phone book.

During my childhood, Hope was a town we passed through but thought nothing of it. We drove to Cloudcroft or beyond for a church function or maybe to White Sands with visiting family. Hope had never been any point on the map I cared about except when it was on the cover of a phone book. And I do remember that section being very small. My husband said he passed through while growing up in Lea County not paying Hope any mind.

This past weekend as we sped home from somewhere West of Cloudcroft, we discovered ahead of us the town of Hope, NM. I made a point to stop and look. As we grow older, people and places mean more to us it seems. I pulled off the road and took some pictures of some buildings on the main street. In this case, the 82.

The basketball court in the picture above looks to be in pretty good shape. It’s the last day of Winter so the trees still look pretty bare.

Across the street on the Northwest corner of Main St and W 1st. According to a thread about this town, there was “a bar upstairs and maybe downstairs at one time, store downstairs. Way back a doctors office in the back room downstairs”. It was the same building the bank was located. The Wellhead Building was constructed in 1905 of artificial stone blocks weighing 55 pounds each. It is also written: “They are cement bricks. There were two brothers in the 20’s that came to the Pecos Valley and set u a cement company and produced those bricks. There are about a dozen or so houses in Artesia built with them also. There was a piece written about the whole story a few years ago. I don’t remember where I read it. There are several other buildings made with them in Hope. The building that houses the Wellhead Brewpub is also made with them.”

I found this image on the web. This is the view down Main Street. I Google info and end up down the rabbit hole spending a few hours reading history of Hope. And there are stories abound.

There is a date on this image, 1924. There is much more research to do about a town I’ve only travelled through with only a memory of a dusty afternoon along the highway.