Pages past - July 29

On this date ...

1970: State Sen.. Odis Echols (D-Clovis) envisioned a future toll highway that connected Santa Rosa, Clovis, Lubbock and Dallas. He said he would introduce legislation to create a nonprofit turnpike authority in New Mexico. The toll road, however, never came to fruition.

• A fire destroyed the Doraeen Brissey farmhouse off Norton Road. A flight service man at Tucumcari Regional Airport spotted the blaze and reported it to dispatchers, but the six-room structure was fully engulfed by flames when firefighters arrived. Officials surmised lightning struck the house the night before, and it smoldered undetected by a hired hand living there until it burst into flames while he was away.

• Tucumcari’s Leonard Douglas Wright, Rudy Garcia, James Decker Leonard and Harold Breidegan each enlisted in the U.S. Navy, according to the Navy recruiting office in Clovis.

• The Odeon Theatre was screening Walt Disney a re-release of 1959’s “Sleeping Beauty,” plus a short feature, 1969’s “Hang Your Hat on the Wind.”