“Lea County was created from Eddy and Chaves counties in 1917 and named for Captain Joseph Calloway Lea, just five years after New Mexico was admitted to the Union as a State. Captain Lea was the first Mayor of Roswell and the father of the New Mexico Military Institute. Lea County had virtually nothing to offer except the vision of a handful of hardy settlers. Wagon roads and cattle trails were the only roads connecting the sparse settlements; there were no railroad, telegraph, daily newspaper, running stream, river, nor any major center of population that could properly be called a city. The mail was a horse-conveyed means of communication requiring days to be picked up and delivered.”