Sumner Recollections with Charlie Foor

From the Alamogordo News, July 5, 1928.

Highway Officials Dig Up Old History At Fort Sumner

Santa Fe, July 2. – The State Highway scout car recently traversed the Abo Highway in an effort to locate the original trail which differs materially from the present road. At Fort Sumner, Charles For [sic], one of the two surviving men who knew Billy the Kid, was interviewed. He not only definitely located the old road, but also piloted the party to the grave of De Baca County’s Robin Hood where he recalled many incidents out of the flaming past of that section.

A mistake has been made, according to Mr. For, in the marking of The Kid’s grave. He says that the metal marker which tourists believe to indicate the spot where the notorious bandit is buried is in reality a good twenty feet from the actual place.

A walk ran through the graveyard roughly from north to south. Tom O’Phalliard [sic], Bowdry [sic] and The Kid were buried side by side next to this walk. The Kid’s grave is the northermost [sic] of the three. Two sticks mark the place where the old walk ran. It is now indistinguishable in the graveyard proper but can be seen outside of the graveyard where it used to run to a joining with the avenue which ran east and west.

The statement made by Burns in his “Saga of Billy The Kid” that grass would not grow over the spot where the three bandit friends were buried was characterized by Mr. For as “just talking.”

The grave with the iron railing around which is the mast [sic] conspicuous spot in the cemetery is the resting place of Pete Maxwell and his wife. Mr. For made and installed this railing.

The debate of the moving of the bones of the bandit was discussed. Mr. For said that he had inspected the grave in the company of Pat Garrett 18 months after the interment and when the first claim of the moving of the bones was made by Las Vegas people. At the time both men agreed that the grave was untouched. In all the years that have intervened there never has been any other vandalism.

It is the hope of Mr. For and a group of Fort Sumner people that the road can be marked which leads to the graveyard and also a suitable headstone placed over the grave of the three bandits. According to local claims hundreds of people yearly come to Fort Sumner with the expressed desire of visiting the site of the old fort and the graveyard.

“It used to take us as many days as it does hours now to go from Fort Sumner to Las Vegas,” Mr. For said, commenting on modern roads and vehicles. “In those days Las Vegas which was the big industry in these was the shipping point for cattle parts. The old Avenue, which you can still see marked as it is with these big trees which used to line it for four miles, was the outlet to Vegas. The mail went out that way daily.”

“The old Abo road was the trail in from Texas by which the buffalo hunters used to come to this country. West of us it was the only connection between the traders and settlers of the Rio Grande Valley. It crossed the river by fording a good ways below the present bridge.”

A very bumpy trail was followed by the party at the pioneer’s direction which he said was the one time highway of greatest importance in that section of the country.

He pointed out a green pasture heavy with luxuriant growth of grass where he stated he had caught many […] This was once the bed of the river which had changed its course several times in the past forty years. A modern road now traverses what was one of the beds of the changeable stream.

With the completion of the road work now being done around Fort Sumner, local residents expect even greater numbers of tourists and state residents to visit the points of interest around their town, the chief of which is the scene of Old Fort Sumner, noted in its day for the home of parties and gaity [sic] without rival and today for being the mecca of many a tourist’s western pilgrimage.