LOCAL

History isn't boring in Lincoln County

Dianne L Stallings
Ruidoso News

Historian, educator and author Lynda Sanchez recently gave a presentation about "Lincoln County Potpourri from bootleg whiskey and Billy the Kid to Apaches and Nazi artifacts." Speaking at La Iglesia de San Juan-Bautistia built in 1887 in the Lincoln State Historical Site, Sanchez spoke of the history of the settlement that spawned Billy the Kid and the Lincoln County War, and of nearby Fort Stanton, which served as an internment camp for Germans and Japanese during World War II, as well as a frontier fort and a federal and state hospital. 

Speaking in a church now used for community meetings in the Lincoln Historical Site, author Lynda Sanchez entertained her audience with stories from bootleg whiskey to Apaches and Billy the Kid, with some Nazi artifacts from Fort Stanton on display.
Sheriff John Owen, who was sheriff for several years in the early 1900s, is one of the men on the gallows erected in 1907, but the convicted killer escaped.
From the pictured adobe wall, Billy the Kid is said to have ambushed Sheriff William J. Brady. Don Francisco Gomez, who worked in the Tunstall store at the time of the incident, was showing artist Peter Hurd of San Patricio the direction from which the sheriff was coming when he was shot. The photo appeared in LIFE magazine in 1939.
Don Roberto Brady sits beneath the portrait of his father, Sheriff William J. Brady, a victim of Billy the Kid. Don Roberto 's son also was a Lincoln County sheriff. The photo appeared in LIFE magazine.