Maxwell, New Mexico

Maxwell is a railroad town named for one of the most land-rich men in American history. Lucien Maxwell, a fur trapper turned rancher, had acquired the Beaubien-Miranda Land Grant through marriage and by buying out the other heirs, accumulating more than one million seven hundred thousand acres, one of the largest private land holdings in United States history. He ran it as a personal fiefdom from Cimarron, welcoming settlers, allowing Ute and Jicarilla Apache to hunt, and leasing mineral rights to miners.

When Maxwell sold the grant in eighteen seventy and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway came through in eighteen seventy-nine, the new town on the old grant took his name. Maxwell the man had already left. The town was simply the echo of his legend.