Lake Valley Cemetery
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This page highlights some of what we know about the Cemetery at Lake Valley New Mexico
It includes:
~ Stories we know of people buriend in the Cemetery.
~ A detailed spreadsheet and map to the graves at the Cemetery known at this time.
If you have information about any person or family in the cemetery, please contact us to share your information. Every story is important to having more undestanding of our area’s history. We thank you!
Please contact us at: hillsboronmhistory@gmail.com
Selected Stories from Lake Valley
Dr. William Guy Beals ~ 1853 - 1937
Dr. William Guy Beals (3/21/1853 – 12/24/1937) was born in Flint, Michigan and received his medical training in homeopathic medicine in Chicago. By 1887 he was practicing medicine in El Paso but soon moved to Sierra County, New Mexico. In 1889 he summoned his Michigan sweetheart, Ida Ann Morrish, married her in Hillsboro, and promptly moved to Gold Dust to try placer mining while serving as a doctor. Soon he claimed a homestead at Tierra Blanca where his brother Carl had homesteaded. There he established a tuberculosis sanitarium and became the little town’s postmaster. With the decline in mining and a growing family, he moved to Lake Valley in 1907 to become the local doctor. Ida died in Hillsboro and Guy in Arizona, but both, along with other members of the family, are buried in the Lake Valley Cemetery. (Location 29)
James Robert Latham ~ 1841 - 1903
James Robert Latham (3/29/1841-8/15/1903) grew up in Live Oak County, Texas, where he enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1862. After his army duty he married Ann Eliza Faulkner in 1865 and devoted himself to ranching and growing a large family. In 1884 they decided to leave West Texas for New Mexico, eventually settling with their ten children on Macho Creek a few miles west of Lake Valley. James Latham and his children became prominent in the area’s ranching business, raising cattle and later angora goats. James and his wife and at least six of his children are buried in the Lake Valley Cemetery. (Location 23)
Blanche O. Wilson Nowlin
Blanche Olivia Wilson Nowlin (1889-1983) was born at Hager Sawmill near Kingston, the only daughter of Swedish immigrants Oliver and Maria Wilson. Oliver Wilson, a stone-mason, built the 3-story Victorio Hotel in Kingston in 1886. Losing the hotel due to debt, he moved his family to Lake Valley in 1908. There in 1917 Blanche married the Santa Fe railroad agent, Asa Nowlin. She became the local representative for Conoco (Continental Oil Co.) in 1920 and continued this work for many years after her husband died in 1937. She and her driver Pedro “Pete” Martínez and his wife Savina were the last three residents of Lake Valley. She is buried in the Wilson plot with her husband, her parents, two brothers, an uncle, and others. (Location: 42)
Lake Valley Cemetery Mapping
Explanation of Lake Valley Cemetery Drone Map and Grave Sites
The Lake Valley Cemetery is located on a slight hill across Highway 27 south of the town. The grave location map shows a large fenced square with the top facing roughly northeast. The entry gate is at the bottom-left of the map. The graves that we can now identify with persons are marked with red numbers, each number often representing more than one grave. Visitors to the cemetery will observe that there are probably more unmarked than marked grave sites.
The early history of Lake Valley had a residential separation of the Anglos and Hispanics, with the Anglos living primarily in the area of the still-standing buildings and the Mexican-Americans to the west in a section referred to as Little Chihuahua or Chihuahuita. The cemetery seems to reflect this ethnic segregation. The known graves with Spanish surnames are all west of the little road that curves around to the east. We start our numbering from this Mexican-American section.
The accompanying list of 125 individuals known to be buried in the Lake Valley Cemetery (link above) includes many for whom we know their grave sites. For these we provide an approximate Location with a number marked in red on the map. There are others for whom a death certificate or obituary indicates burial here, but we have been unable to identify a specific grave sites.