Eastern New Mexico State Park

The park was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps and covered 380 acres. It contained twin artificial lakes, a bathhouse, a caretaker's house, a latrine foundation, a picknicking slab, and the slab/pump of the well to fill the lakes. The park was never fully finished and the land was eventually given over to other use. A fire in 2022 burned the last remaining structures.

A site for a state park between the towns of Clovis and Portales was chosen in January 1934. S.R. De Boer, a landscape architect for the National Park Service, assessed the site and determined that the soil may be too sandy to hold water but was convinced by local interested parties to move forward with the plan. The camp was approved by the CCC on April 5, 1934. The estimated time and cost were twelve months for a total of $39,075.

CCC Company 804 arrived on June 13th 1934, composed of an average of 200 enrollees from New Mexico, Texas, and Wyoming. Unfortunately for those men, canvas tents were used instead of permenant barracks; this made for poor conditions in a windy area on the edge of the Dust Bowl. The barracks were finally completed in mid-October, a quarter of a year later. Company 804 was removed in October 1935 unexpectedly to work on another project, but the park was unfinished. The camp was eventually transferred to the WPA and ownership was later transferred in 1951 to Eastern New Mexico University.^[1]

The land was owned by Eastern New Mexico Junior College (later ENM University). By the 2000's, the land was only 24 acres. When it was sold to a private buyer in September of 2020, it housed two decaying buildings from the original park and two Eastern New Mexico University structures: the former Greyhound Stadium (a new one built on campus in 2016) and the former Blackwater Draw Museum (relocated onto campus in 2017).^[2] In the spring of 2022, a grass fire destroyed the remnants of the CCC buildings and the former museum, which were all then razed.

^[1] Hill, Katie. Eastern New Mexico State Park, Highway 70, 6 miles north of Portales, Portales, Roosevelt County, NM. Washington, DC. National Par Service, 2014.

^[2] Wilson, Kevin. Eastern New Mexico News (Clovis) September 19th 2020. .