The first non-indigenous settlers of the area around Roswell were a group of pioneers from Missouri , who attempted to start a settlement 15 miles southwest of what is now Roswell in 1865 but were forced to abandon the site because of a lack of water. It was called Missouri Plaza.
Van C. Smith, a businessman from Omaha, Nebraska, and his partner, Aaron Wilburn , built2 adobe buildings in 1869 that began what is now Roswell. The two buildings became the settlement’s general store, post office , and sleeping quarters for paying guests. In 1871, Smith filed a claim with the federal government for the land around the buildings, and on August 20, 1873, he became the town’s first postmaster. Van C. Smith was the son of Roswell Smith, a prominent lawyer in Lafayette, Indiana, and Annie Ellsworth, daughter of U.S. Patent Commissioner Henry Leavitt Ellsworth. He called the town Roswell, after his father’s first name.
Roswell was originally a part of Lincoln County that included all of southeastern New Mexico, but in 1889 Chaves County was carved out of the larger county, and Roswell became its county seat. The Roswell, NM Post Office uses ZIP codes 88202, 88201 and 88203.
Captain Joseph Callaoway Lea ad his family bought out Smith and Wilburn’s claim and became the owners of most of the Land of Roswell and the area surrounding it in 1877 . The town was relatively sleepy during the Lincoln County War (1877-1879). A major aquifer was discovered when merchant Nathan Jaffa had a well drilled in his back yard on Richardson Avenue in 1890 , resulting in the area’s first major growth and development spurt. The growth continued when a railroad was built through town in 1893.
A prisoner of War camp was located in nearby Orchard Park during WWII . The German prisoners of war were used to do major infrastructure work in Roswell, such as paving the banks of the North Spring River. Some POWs used rocks of different sizes to create the outline of an iron cross among the stones covering the north bank. Later, the iron cross was covered with a thin layer of concrete. In the 1980s, a crew cleaning the river bed cleared off the concrete and revealed the outline once more. The small park just south of the cross was then known as Iron Cross Park. On November 11, 1996 the park was renamed POW/MIA park. The park displays a piece of the Berlin Wall, presented to the City of Roswell by the German Air Force.
Roswell was a site for much of Robert Goddards early rockety work in the 1930’s . It is also the birthplace of actress Demi Moore, musician John Denver , and Hall of Fame jockey Mike E. Smith. A Golf Hall of Famer, Nancy Lopez, was reared in Roswell (though born in California). A Hall of Famer astronaut, sixth man on the moon Edgar Mitchell, attended school in Roswell. Roger Staubach (later of the Dallas Cowboys) played football at NMMI, and Lewis Lloyd (later of the Houston Rockets) played basketball there. The professional baseball record for home runs in a season, 72, was set in 1954 by Joe Bauman of the Roswell Rockets, who took up permanent residence there (the record was broken in 2001 by Barry Bonds).
Roswell was a location of military importance from 1941 to 1967 , at which time Walker Air Force Base was decommissioned. After the closure of the base, Roswell capitalized on its pleasant climate and reinvented itself as a retirement community. Roswell has benefited from interest in the alleged UFO incident, and in more recent times the business community has deliberately sought out tourists interested in UFOs.
A major manufacturer in the early 1980’s , Transportation Manufacturing Corporation, which produced buses opened a factory in Roswell. The factory has opened and closed repeatedly, resulting in cyclical swings of unemployment. TMC stopped building buses. NovaBus used the same buildings to manufacture buses but has also closed. The plant was reopened by Millennium Transit Services in 2003.
In 2002, Roswell was named one of the All-American cities.
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