Adron Turner stops his tractor and looks out at
the freshly plowed fields. At 85 his face shows the
years he has spent working in the outdoors, but
his spirit and energy seem endless and he's
happy at the chance to share the stories he has to
tell.

Turner was five years old when his family
came to Portales area from Glenrose, Texas in
1899.

"We came a year after W.O. Dunlap did, and
homesteaded out on the Bethel Highway,"
Turner said. "The railroad had just been set up
and most of the towns were barely a year old."

Turner has farmed the land he now owns on the
Floyd Highway for many years, but he has lived
in three Eastern New Mexico counties.

He smiles when he tells about a trip from
Graham, Texas to Yeso. The trip took 16 days on
horseback, he said, but one time he ran one of the
miles on foot.

“I was riding in a hack with this man and a
bridle on one of the horses came loose. I thought
my friend was holding onto the horses but they
got loose …”

His eyes reflect the drama of chasing after the
wild horses for a mile until the hack crashed into
a telephone pole.

Took 30 minutes and 25 cents to fix one of the
wheels on the hack which broke in the com--
motion.

"Now-a-days it probably would have cost $10.
That's the part of the story I wanted to tell," he
said.

Turner has been both a farmer and a rancher
in New Mexico - and, he said, he prefers the
ranching life.

He ranched for 32 years on property near Ft.
Sumner on land he said was called Loco Draw.
"It was called Loco Draw because of all the
loco weed that grew around the area." he says.