FOLSOM

A short history of Folsom

Folsom gives its name to the nearby type site for the Folsom Tradition, a Paleo-Indian cultural sequence dating to between 11000 and 8000 BC. The Folsom site, about 8 miles west of the village, was excavated in 1926, and found to have been a marsh-side kill site or camp where 23 bison had been killed using distinctive tools, known as Folsom points.

In the first half of the 19th century, the region was a hunting ground for Comanche, Ute, and Jicarilla Apache Indians. The first white settlement near Folsom was Madison, settled in 1864 and named for its founder, Madison Emery. In 1877, a post office was established. Madison became a ghost town in 1888 when the Colorado and Southern Railroad was completed and Folsom was established nearby on the railroad line. The train was held up three times near Folsom by Black Jack Ketchum and his gang. The final robbery in 1899 led to the capture and hanging of Ketchum.

Folsom prospered in the early years, with the largest stockyards west of Fort Worth. Homesteaders moved in and attempted to farm, and the town reached a peak population of nearly 1,000. The area proved unsuitable for farming, though, because of drought, and large ranches soon replaced the small farms. The town suffered a blow from which it never recovered on August 27, 1908, when a massive rainstorm caused a devastating flood, which nearly destroyed the town and killed 18 people. (Flash flooding from the same storm also uncovered the bison bones that George McJunkin found in Dead Horse Arroyo, which later became known as the Folsom site.)

A high school operated briefly in Folsom. Its only graduates were three students in 1931. In 1966, the elementary school at Folsom closed and the students transferred to the school in Des Moines, 8 miles away. Folsom has a post office.

Adapted (trimmed) from the Wikipedia article Folsom, New Mexico, revision 1382315340 by its contributors, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.