Bard, New Mexico: The Town That Moved Three Times

Bard, five miles east of San Jon on the old alignment, was established in the early nineteen hundreds as a siding on the Chicago, Rock Island and Gulf Railroad. Its name is said to have come from either the Bar-D ranch brand or from a settler who named it for a watermelon shipping point back in Texas. A post office opened in nineteen oh eight.

By nineteen oh nine the settlement was calling itself Bard City, a name it dropped again in nineteen thirteen. In its early years Bard had a reputation as a wild cowboy town where gunfights were not uncommon. The community is said to have shifted its physical location, chasing the advantages of new rail lines and then of Route sixty-six when the highway came through in the nineteen twenties.

The post office stayed open until nineteen ninety-one, but the population had dwindled to a handful long before then. Today the name on the map marks an empty stretch of high plains grass.