Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
Sorted by date Results 577 - 601 of 1682
A resident's complaint about the city's swimming pool remaining closed and a commissioner's response prompted the Tucumcari City Commission and its city manager to openly consider a bond issue to repair or replace the pool and possibly replace a leaky roof on the recreation center. The proposal was sparked by Lisa Montoya during the public comment portion of Thursday's meeting. She said she was disappointed to learn the Tucumcari City Pool would not open for a third straight summer. Montoya...
It was like Tucumcari Rawhide Days never went away. The annual festival that pays tribute to western lifestyles and the "Rawhide" television drama of the 1960s (starring a young Clint Eastwood) shot near Tucumcari was canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Despite the long break, crowds flocked back to Tucumcari over the weekend to see the traditional Texas longhorn cattle drive on Route 66 and view cowboy demonstrationsm, hear live music and eat vittles from chuckwagons at t...
Tucumcari High School's track teams crowned seven district champions during the District 4AAA championships in Tucumcari, including one notable double-winner. Senior Khobie Salvador, apparently recovered from a bout with pneumonia several weeks ago, took home two district medals by winning the discus throw and the shot put. His hurl of 132 feet, 3 ½ inches in the discus was nearly 30 feet longer than the second-place finisher and was a personal-best for him this season. His effort was...
Because of a lack of hitting in the bottom half of the order, a winnable district softball game for Tucumcari against Dexter was lost last Tuesday. The Lady Rattlers left 10 runners on base during a 6-2 loss on April 26 against the Lady Demons, including the bases loaded once and runners on second and third in another inning. The top half of the Tucumcari's batting order is robust, including shortstop Alexus Lafferty hitting more than .600 going into the doubleheader. But coach CJ Oglesby said...
Just days after wildfires burned tens of thousands of acres in northern New Mexico, Quay County Commissioners on Monday unanimously approved an ordinance that issues a burn ban for an indefinite period. County fire marshal Lucas Bugg recommended the proclamation’s passage. He said he conferred with fire chiefs of the county’s rural districts and municipalities, and all were in favor of a burn ban. Bugg said an “unimaginable” amount of land has burned in San Miguel, Colfax and Mora counties from wildfires there. He also cited the Mitchell Fire e...
One of the principals for the Paulita's New Mexico food company was busy washing windows Thursday in the gymnasium of the former armory building now owned by Mesalands Community College. Alan Porter was getting the big room ready so his Rio Rancho-based company could relocate equipment and supplies at the South 11th Street site in the coming weeks and resume production of its New Mexican food by late May. Porter, who co-founded Paulita's New Mexico with his wife Paula about a decade ago, said...
A new film festival for this weekend's Tucumcari Rawhide Days was supposed to serve as a soft reopening of the city's historic Odeon Theatre, which has been closed for more than two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, because of technical problems and other difficulties, the 1936 theater won't open for several more weeks. Instead, the film festival primarily will be in the lecture hall of the Mesalands Community College's wind-energy center on South 11th Street. Odeon owners Robert...
A proposed transfer of the Mountain View Elementary School property to a daycare center is proving to be more complicated than the school superintendent initially believed. Tucumcari Public Schools superintendent Aaron McKinney said during a previous board meeting last month he was looking at transferring the school on South Rock Island Street to Eastern Plains Early Head Start, which is leasing the property for $1 a year. McKinney had said he wanted to dispose of the property because it costs the district thousands of dollars per year to...
The Tucumcari City Commission on Thursday approved a short-term contract with the Tucumcari/Quay County Chamber of Commerce to serve as the city’s events coordinator through June, with the option of a longer-term deal later. The contract with the chamber is prorated at a salary of $1,250 a month from Thursday through June 30, the end of the 2022 fiscal year, with the hope that chamber director Scott Crotzer can organize a festival — tentatively billed as a revival of the long-dormant Pinata Festival — by June 4 in a spot once occupied by the N...
SAN JON — Board members vocally authorized the superintendent of San Jon Municipal Schools to shop for a new bank this summer after she described rude or indifferent treatment by Citizens Bank of Tucumcari to the district’s new business manager and administrative assistant. During the board’s regular meeting April 11, superintendent Janet Gladu said her administrative assistant, Stormi Sena, was “livid” about her treatment at the bank while making deposits from the school carnival. The district’s new business manager, Bryan Runyan of K12 Acco...
The Arch Hurley Conservancy District last week began its second straight growing season of not allocating water to its irrigation system due to persistent drought. The district’s board of directors on April 12 officially voted to not allocate water “at this time” after hearing manager Franklin McCasland’s monthly report on the levels of Conchas Lake, which supplies the irrigation system. The lake dropped a half-foot from the previous month, to 4,160.5 feet as of that morning. Arch Hurley typically does not discharge water until the lake le...
Sandia Prep's baseball team rose to the No. 1 ranking in Class 3A a few days before its district matchup at Tucumcari, and it played like a top-ranked squad during a doubleheader sweep of the Rattlers on April 12. The Sundevils (13-4) cruised to 20-6 and 15-5 victories over the Rattlers (1-13), with both games shortened by the mercy rule. Sandia Prep, winners of eight in a row, also stayed in first place in District 4/5 with a 6-0 mark. The Sundevils put on a clinic in the opener. Their bats...
Kandel's Street Sips Tea Shack and More opened earlier this month in a food trailer in the parking lot of a long-closed Tucumcari gas station on Route 66. A week after the opening, co-owner Rhonda Kandel said Saturday that business was going well. "The community is excited, and they have supported us," she said. Kandel's Street Sips, a few dozen yards east of the Roadrunner Lodge Motel, offers New Mexico-blended tea, along with treats from Tucumcari resident Michael Carlson's Goodies Go Last....
The Tucumcari Lodgers Tax Board last week recommended using nearly $70,000 in promotional motel tax funds for festivals or tourism entities in the 2023 fiscal year, plus another $23,200 in executive motel tax funds for non-promotional projects. Tucumcari’s city manager also warned the promoter for the Rockin’ Route 66 festival — the city’s largest event before the COVID-19 pandemic — may cancel this year’s festival in June or the 2023 edition because of his financial difficulties and the board recommending less than a third of the funding he re...
NARA VISA - Sacred Heart Catholic Church is a survivor. The small but picturesque white chapel that sits on a hill overlooking the northeastern Quay County village has been there for more than a century. It's remained despite the ebbing of the village's population and the closing of its school decades ago and virtually all of its businesses. And thanks to a small but stalwart group of parishioners, Sacred Heart Catholic Church emerged from a COVID-19 pandemic that closed it for almost a year....
The Quay County Commission on Monday chose the lowest of three scaled-back bids to build a low-water bridge on Old Route 66 over San Jon Creek that still exceeded the engineer's estimate by more than $650,000. Commissioners, on the recommendation of county manager Daniel Zamora and Stantec Engineering's Wayland Oliver, approved the $2.62 million bid from Vital Consulting Group of Albuquerque to build the bridge near the existing Bridge 1625 between San Jon and Endee. The 1931 bridge will be...
The Tucumcari softball team in a workmanlike fashion swept a doubleheader Thursday by 15-0 and 17-7 scores against a visiting Logan squad that's rebuilding its program. In the first game, Mireya Estrada pitched a no-hitter against the Lady Longhorns in a game that was shortened to four innings by the mercy rule. Estrada struck out seven with no walks and one hit batter. Harley McKinney, Kylee Carmichael and Alexis Ramirez each hit two-run singles. In the nightcap, Sage Knapp earned the win by...
The East Mountain baseball team showed last week why it is ranked fourth in Class 3A. Tucumcari baseball showed it still has a lot of work to do. The Timberwolves (9-2) swept their district-opening doubleheader April 5 by scores of 22-3 and 17-4 at Tucumcari (1-9). East Mountain's only defeats this season are close losses last month to state-ranked Robertson and Santa Fe Indian. In the first game, East Mountain jumped to a 4-0 lead in the first inning, led 6-0 after two and tallied 12 runs in...
Technically, the newly opened Huffman Counseling and Wellness LLC is at 325 S. First St. in Tucumcari. However, the co-owner simply tells prospective customers it's at Dr. Saltz's old office. Dr. Jim Saltz operated as a physician in that location for several decades until he shuttered the building about 10 years ago. Saltz died in 2017 at age 82. "It's Dr. Saltz's building. I don't mind saying that," said Cassie Huffman, who co-owns the building with her husband Clay. "Obviously, his name came...
The city's Lodgers Tax Advisory Board heard a funding proposal from Rotary Club of Tucumcari to refurbish the big "T" on Tucumcari Mountain so it's brighter at night and stands out more during the day. Robert Hockaday and his son, Bobby, made a formal presentation about the "T" project during a board work session that also considered presentations from events and entities requesting financial assistance of motel tax funds during the 2023 fiscal year. The Rotary Club in late 2020 relighted the "T...
The era of legal recreational marijuana began Friday morning in Tucumcari, but not without a few hiccups due to supply shortages and one business' computer-system issues. Only one of an estimated eight retail cannabis businesses that are set up in Tucumcari opened Friday morning for New Mexico's first day of legal recreational cannabis sales. And the one business that opened on Friday, Buds n' More on South First Street near the Interstate 40 exit, didn't conduct hardly any cannabis sales due...
An engineer explained to county commissioners three options on dealing with an aging Dr. Dan C. Trigg Memorial Hospital in Tucumcari - building a new facility, renovating it or using a hybrid of the two. Either way, it's going to cost at least $19 million and likely more. Mike Williams, a healthcare planner and principal at Stantec Architecture in Phoenix, talked by videoconference about those options from a feasibility study for the hospital during a Quay County Commission meeting Thursday....
LOGAN - Gateway Christian and Logan's baseball teams may face each other again later this spring during the Class 1A playoffs, including a possible rematch of last year's title game. For now, the Warriors have bragging rights against the defending 1A champ. Gateway Christian scored the go-ahead run in extra innings, then retired Logan in order for secure a 4-3 victory on March 28. That gave the Warriors (3-3) two wins in three games against the Longhorns (4-2) this season. Gateway quickly recove...
A Tucumcari City Commission on Thursday barely approved a resolution that asks New Mexico Bank & Trust to rethink the planned closing of its Logan branch later this year. The resolution split by a 3-2 vote in favor of the measure. Commissioners Mike Cherry, Christopher Arias and Mayor Ruth Ann Litchfield voted for it. Mayor Pro Tem Ralph Moya and Commissioner Paul Villanueva cast votes against it. The resolution requests Iowa-based HTLF, which owns New Mexico Bank & Trust, to “reconsider” its decision to close its Logan branch. Moya noted banks...
A South Carolina-based music composer recently was in Tucumcari to soak up inspiration for his forthcoming "Route 66 Suite" orchestral composition. Nolan Stolz said he's found plenty of it in this region. "I have very specific things about Tucumcari that will go into the music," he said. Stolz, an associate professor of music at University of South Carolina Upstate, took a sabbatical in July to travel Route 66 and conduct research for his symphonic piece. He said he tries to stay overnight at...