Find
businesses offering goods & services to the traveling public
Visit
our video library featuring scenes from "The Land of Enchantment"
Pat Garrett
Born in Chambers County, Alabama, on June 5, 1850, Patrick Floyd Jarvis Garrett was just three when his widowed farmer father moved his eight children to a 1,800-acre plantation in Claiborne Parish, Louisiana. There he received some formal schooling.
At age 18 and already an agnostic, he left for Dallas County, Texas, where he briefly farmed and ranched. About 100 miles north of Abilene, Garrett struggled for a year as a buffalo hunter.
A seasoned marksman, he arrived at old Fort Sumner in 1878, where rancher Pete Maxwell hired him. There the quiet Garrett, a lanky 6' 5" tall, was given the nickname 'Juan Largo', and as a bartender first became acquainted with the Kid.
Elected Lincoln County Sheriff in November, 1880, Garrett did what his four predecessors couldn't: immediately deputized, he tracked down and captured the Kid just seven weeks later and hauled him off to jail before Garrett's elected term had even begun. When the Kid escaped jail four months later, Garrett tracked him down again in 77 days and killed him.
His killing of the Kid brought him overnight notoriety. But it also made Garrett controversial. Nevertheless, he tried to use that to climb to greater heights. But whenever Garrett brought about law and order, it seemed that those who had eagerly sought to elect him a lawman had little other use for him.
"He was a kind and loving husband and father, and an outstanding field Sheriff," acknowledged Leon Metz, author of the award-winning biography Pat Garrett: The Story of a Western Lawman (1974). "But for the rest of his life he tried to become somebody he wasn't cut out to be."
Not reelected, Garrett drifted to the Texas panhandle in 1884 and organized a group of Rangers to thwart cattle rustling, then returned to ranching near Ruidoso in 1885-86.
Failing at an ambitious attempt to irrigate the Pecos River Valley near Roswell in 1885-93, he moved his wife and family to Uvalde, Texas, in 1891, where he raised race horses.
Hired to track down the killers of Col. Albert J. Fountain of La Mesilla, Garrett returned to New Mexico in 1896 and settled his family in Las Cruces. He was quickly elected Dona Ana County Sheriff. Despite his dogged efforts, the alleged killers were tried but acquitted.
Strapped for funds, Garrett eagerly sought the position of Collector of Customs at El Paso, Texas. President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him to that position in 1901. Not reappointed, a dejected Garrett returned to Las Cruces in 1905 and resumed ranching until his untimely death near there on February 28, 1908.
