Essays

Moseying: History of the Southern Llano Estacado

Hermit Harry Robinson
September 4, 2002

On a fine fall afternoon in the year 1868, Harry Robinson walked along the Mescalero Escarpment, headed north. Where he had been for the previous week or month, he never told anyone. Years later he told some kids visiting him he had landed at Vera Cruz, Mexico as a cabin boy when ten years of age. For the next twenty years he wandered slowly north, living and working when he needed to, but constantly moving northwards, for reasons he could not tell.

Gil Hinshaw, in “Lea, New Mexico’s Last Frontier,” reports that he settled down at Mescalero Spring that year. Fourteen years would pass before another Anglo would build a house within thirty miles. Surely Harry knew Ma’am Jones over at Seven Rivers on the north end of the Guadalupe Mountains, and probably got a few supplies from her from time to time. The ciboleros and comancheros did not come to the spring, not wishing to cross the dunes or to climb the escarpment with their wagons. I imagine some of the buffalo hunters like Frank Collinson found his camp at the spring, and maybe some of the soldiers like Lt. Nolan from Fort Concho, but I can not find mention of such an occurrence.

Harry lived in a three-walled mud and stick dwelling. His bed was a hammock built of sticks and leather, suspended four feet from the ceiling with rawhide. The fourth wall was built up chest-high, leaving an opening from which to scout out intruders. When he saw someone coming, he would slip away and hide, carrying his “buffalo” gun and field glasses. Local ranchers of the time said he was “the man no one could sneak up on.”

He was not afraid of any of the Mescalero Apaches coming east from across the Rio Pecos through the sanddunes to hunt buffalo up on the Llano Estacado. The Comanches did not wander near the spring very often – it was just too darned close to the Mescaleros’ territory. For most of those fourteen years he lived a life as removed from human interaction as can be imagined.

After the ranchers arrived, Harry built up a herd of over three hundred cattle. Each had a name. Cowboys would hear him talking to a “beeve,” having a deep philosophical one-sided discussion. Harry pampered his cows, cleaning out their drinking troughs morning and night, and ordering special bran for a treat at Christmastime.

Despite never visiting a town, (to his neighbors’ knowledge), somewhere and somehow, Harry acquired a wax-cylinder phonograph. Cowboys would come from miles around just to listen to the only music machine of the area. He played the classics, religious music, as well as opera, and popular music. He lived until 1911, and was buried at the foot of the escarpment, according to his wishes that he would forever look towards distant Capitan Peak.

I can not find a map that indicates the location of Mescalero Spring. I believe it to be near the wide spot on the highway from Tatum to Roswell known as Caprock. I am old enough to remember the post office and gas station at Caprock, but nowadays there is only one house on the south side of the road. A mile or three to the west the road gently slopes down off of the Llano, and just a few more miles further is the Bureau of Land Management’s Mescalero Sanddunes Park.

I love that stretch of empty road, for its views, for its spaciousness, and because I know I will be stopping in an hour at Roswell for gasoline, a potty break, and probably a meal. I believe the view just west of Caprock is a vista through a door, opening up to the grand landscapes of the American Southwest. When I drive that stretch of highway, I feel the promises that memory can bring; I remember running under the cool pines of the Sacramentos, I look back at times spent interacting with the centuries old Hispano-Indio culture of the upper Rio Grande Valley up at Sante Fe and Taos, and I even shiver with the memories the deep snows of Wolf Creek Pass where ice forms a foot thick on the avalanche tunnel walls.

From Caprock to Maljamar a road runs south, a few miles east of the escarpment. It is a good place to imagine being totally alone, like Harry. Scientists studying the effects of human isolation have visited ranches in Lea and Chaves counties. In the early part of the 20th century, Dorothy Scarborough wrote “The Wind” (set on the other side of the Llano Estacado along Champion Creek), a “romance” about the effects of loneliness. Hollywood made a movie of her book, but changed her ending. Read her book or see if some outlet has a video of the movie, then drive up to Caprock and spent a little time not far from where Harry spent 43 years of his life. Take turns being left all alone along that road. Stretching the imagination is one of the most glorious things to do!