Tatum’s "First Street". Photo by Phyllis Eileen Banks
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When a town is small with no visible attractions on the main highway, reasons to cause people to stop for a while, it becomes a place on the way to . . . . Tatum is 21 miles to Lovington to the south on New Mexico Road 206 or 73 miles west to Roswell or 15 miles east to Texas on U. S. Highway 380.
Tatum, population 768, elevation 3,986, was founded in 1909 by James G. Tatum when he filed on a homestead of 320 acres and opened a general store. There was no post office, so as a service to his customers he brought mail three times a week from Scott, another settlement, no longer in existence. Eventually Tatum was granted a post office, and Mattie G. Tatum was the first postmistress.
A school was financed with box socials and neighborhood dances. Eventually the Lea County oil boom reached the town in the 1940s and brought some prosperity. Agriculture is still the town’s mainstay, although some active oil wells still exist in the area surrounding the town. Travelers sometimes stop when passing through, but the description of a sleepy little town in the West does fit Tatum.
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Lovington’s Chaparral Park. Photo by Charles Kelley
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Lovington became the county seat of Lea County when it was created from the eastern portions of Eddy and Chaves Counties in 1917. A man named Robert Florence Love, known by his middle name, was determined to establish a town where his homestead was located, the site of present-day Lovington. He filed for a post office permit under the name of Loving. However, it was denied as there was a settlement south of Carlsbad known as Loving. He changed the application name to Lovington, and the post office was established on September 12, 1908.
There were lean years with drought and isolation, but Lovington began to come of age in the late 1920s. Oil at Hobbs and later at Lovington caused rivalry between the two cities. However, after World War II both cities began to unite in a common endeavor.
Agriculture, Lovington’s economic mainstay, advanced with irrigation farming, and the size of herds of cattle vastly increased. This, plus the discovery of oil, gave the city increased wealth. Recently the dairy industry has branched into cheese processing.
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