Tolar, New Mexico
{{Use mdy dates|date=July 2023}}
{{Infobox settlement
|official_name = Tolar, New Mexico
|settlement_type = Ghost Town
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|image_skyline = Tolar, New Mexico. Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad train between Clovis and Vaughn, New Mexico stopping for water.jpg
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|image_caption = Santa Fe train stopping for water at Tolar, March 1943
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|image_map = Map of New Mexico highlighting Roosevelt County.svg
|mapsize = 250px
|map_caption = Location of Roosevelt County, New Mexico
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|subdivision_type = Country
|subdivision_name = United States
|subdivision_type1 = State
|subdivision_name1 = New Mexico
|subdivision_type2 = County
|subdivision_name2 = Roosevelt
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|timezone = Mountain (MST)
|utc_offset = -7
|timezone_DST = MDT
|utc_offset_DST = -6
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|elevation_m = 4222
|elevation_ft = 1287
|coordinates = {{coord|34|27|03|N|103|55|54|W|type:city_region:US-NM_source:GNIS-enwiki|display=title}}
|postal_code_type = ZIP Code
|postal_code = 88134
|area_code = 575
|blank_name = GNIS feature ID
|blank_info = 899957
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Tolar, New Mexico (pronounced TOL-er)Szasz at 216 is a ghost town in the panhandle of northern Roosevelt County that existed in the 20th century. The site is at the intersection of New Mexico State Road 86 and U.S. Routes 60 and 84 between Fort Sumner in De Baca County and Melrose in Curry County. Tolar was established as a stop on the Belen Cutoff of the Santa Fe Railway in 1907. A train carrying munitions exploded there in 1944, causing the largest accidental explosion in New Mexico history.Szasz at 219.
Origin
The first settler in the vicinity of Tolar was Alvin Ellender Jeter, who applied for a patent on 160 acres of land under the Homestead Act in 1901.Sloan at 72. Jeter found abundant groundwater there and built a half-dugout house.Sloan at 72. His daughter Marvie Ellen Jeter, born July 9, 1903, was the first child born at Tolar.Sloan at 72 The Jeter family moved to Haskell, Texas in 1917.Sloan at 73.
To bypass the steep grades on its line through the Raton and Glorieta Passes, the Santa Fe Railway in 1903 began work on the Belen Cutoff across East Central New Mexico, building a new line eastward from Belen through the Abo Pass to Texico on the state line with Texas.Myrick at 20-21. Much sand and gravel for construction of the railroad came from the vicinity of Tolar.Julyan at 283 A race riot broke out in 1905 amongst the construction workers and railroad men that led to eight deaths; supposedly, the bodies were buried in fill at Tolar.Penner, Kelley & Parker at 48. The cutoff was finished in December 1907.Myrick at 23.
While still a tent city, the United States Post Office Department opened a post office at Tolar on August 18, 1905.Payne at 120, Julyan at 356. J.W. Coleman, the first postmaster, named the town for Tolar, Texas, where his daughter lived.Padon at 166. In 1908, the town was platted.Padon at 166. By 1911, 600 people lived there.Szasz at 218 Tolar had a school until 1926, when it was consolidated with one in Taiban.Sloan at 72. The railroad station closed in March 1933.Boyle The population fell to 350 by 1941 and under 300 in 1944.Szasz at 218
1944 explosion
Midday on November 30, 1944, an eighty-one-car west-bound mixed freight train derailed after a hot box on the seventh car of the train led to its axle breaking.Sloan at 72, Szasz at 219. The train carried airplane engines, canned corned beef, mattresses, fuel oil, and 165 five-hundred-pound bombs bound for the Pacific Theatre.Szasz at 219 Thirty-six cars derailed.Szasz at 219 The oil car caught fire.Szasz at 219 After burning for twenty to thirty minutes, the munitions exploded.Sloan at 72. The explosion dug a crater 75 feet wide and 10 feet deep.Sloan at 72. Most of the buildings in Tolar were destroyed, including the post office, the railroad station, and the grocery.Szasz at 221. The blast was felt 120 miles away in Hereford, Texas.Sloan at 72. Thirty miles to the southeast in Elida, dishes fell from their shelves and windows broke in Melrose, twelve miles to the east.Szasz at 220. One person was killed, Tolar resident Jess Brown, who was struck in the head by a piece of metal and died while being transported to the hospital in Melrose.Sloan at 72, Szasz at 221. His widow, Pauline Brown, received a $17,500 settlement from the railroad for his death.{{cite court|litigants=In re Randolph|vol= 347|reporter= S.W.2d|opinion= 91|pinpoint=97|court=Mo.|date=1961|url= https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=9393335685926996270}} Because of the war, the Federal Bureau of Investigation sent Special Agent R.J. Untreiner to investigate.Szasz at 221. The Bureau found no signs of sabotage and that it was an accident.Szasz at 221. While The New York Times reported only a single paragraph about the accident, it was front-page news in New Mexico newspapers.United Press at 25, Szasz at 221, Sumner at 1. Because of that news coverage, officials of the Manhattan Project issued a cover story of an ammunition explosion on the Alamogordo Air Force Base on July 16, 1945, after the test of the first atomic bomb.Szasz at 222.
Tolar Today
While the town had been declining for years, the explosion hastened its demise.Szasz at 216. The post office was closed April 5, 1946, mail being redirected to the Taiban post office.Payne at 121, Julyan at 356. Today, there is nothing left of the community as Tolar “is only a wide spot” on the highway.Szasz at 216.
Two locomotives and five freight cars of a BNSF Railroad freight train derailed at Tolar on September 21, 1997."Derailed" at C1.
On November 21, 2014, ahead of the seventieth anniversary of the explosion, the New Mexico Department of Transportation dedicated a historical marker to commemorate the event.{{Cite web |last= |first= |title=Tolar explosion marker unveiled |url=https://www.easternnewmexiconews.com/story/2014/11/21/publishnews/tolar-explosion-marker-unveiled/122579.html |access-date=2023-12-02 |website=The Eastern New Mexico News |language=en}}{{Cite web |title=Tolar explosion to get historic marker |url=https://www.portales.com/news/details/tolar-explosion-to-get-historic-marker |access-date=2023-12-02 |website=Roosevelt County Chamber of Commerce |language=en-US}} The marker is located near Mile Marker 344 on U.S. Routes 60 and 84, two miles west of the site of Tolar.New Mexico Department of Transportation, press release, "WWII Munitions Train Explosion Commemorated with Historic Marker" (Nov. 18, 2014) [http://dot.state.nm.us/content/dam/nmdot/Community/Press_Releases/PR-tolarhistoricmarker-111814.pdf] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150907101212/http://dot.state.nm.us/content/dam/nmdot/Community/Press_Releases/PR-tolarhistoricmarker-111814.pdf|date=2015-09-07}}
The site of Tolar is in the Portales Micropolitan Statistical Area, which is part of the larger Clovis-Portales Combined Statistical Area.
References
{{reflist}}
Bibliography
- Dixie Boyle, A History of Highway 60 & the Belen Cutoff: A Brief History. Parker, Colorado: Outskirts Press, 2010. {{ISBN|1432760904}}
- "Derailed Train Blocks Track West of Clovis," Albuquerque Journal, September 23, 1997, p. C1. {{ISSN|1526-5137}}
- Francis L. & Roberta B. Fugate. Roadside History of New Mexico. Missoula, Montana: Mountain Press Publishing, 1989. {{ISBN|0-87842-242-0}}.
- Robert Julyan, The Place Names of New Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996. {{ISBN|0-8263-1688-3}}.
- David F. Myrick, New Mexico’s Railroads: A Historical Survey. Rev. ed. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990. {{ISBN|978-0-8263-1185-6}}.
- Temple Padon, “Rural Development in the Homestead Period,” in Roosevelt County History and Heritage, ed. by Jean M. Burroughs. Portales, N.M.: Bishop Printing, 1975. {{OCLC|1015585819}}
- Keith Payne, “Town and Rural Post Offices,” in Roosevelt County History and Heritage, ed. by Jean M. Burroughs. Portales, N.M.: Bishop Printing, 1975. {{OCLC|1015585819}}
- William Penner, Shawn Kelley & Nicholas Parker, Ho! To the Land of Sunshine: A History of the Belen Cutoff. Albuquerque: P3 Planning, 2013. {{ISBN|9780578134093}}
- Wendel Sloan, “Tolar Before the Explosion,” New Mexico Magazine, October 1987, pp. 72–73. {{ISSN|0028-6249}}
- Alabam Sumner, "One Death from Tolar Blast: War Brought Closer Home When Explosion Occurs," Clovis News-Journal, December 1, 1944, p. 1.
- Ferenc M. Szasz, “The Tolar, New Mexico, Munitions Train Explosion,” Larger than Life: New Mexico in the Twentieth Century, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006. {{ISBN|978-0-8263-3883-9}}.
- United Press, “Car of Bombs Explodes,” The New York Times, December 1, 1944, at 25. {{ISSN|0362-4331}}
{{Roosevelt County, New Mexico}}
Category:Geography of Roosevelt County, New Mexico
Category:Ghost towns in New Mexico
Category:History of Roosevelt County, New Mexico
Category:1905 establishments in New Mexico Territory
Category:Disasters in New Mexico
Category:1944 fires in the United States
Category:1944 disasters in the United States
Category:Explosions in the United States
Category:Train and rapid transit fires
Category:Accidents and incidents involving Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway