Friends of Pat Garrett

Cal Traylor and David Thomas of Friends of Pat Garrett appeared on the Leon Metz KTSM AM 690 Radio Show today to discuss preserving the Garrett marker.

Leon C. Metz is the author of Pat Garrett, The Story of a Western Lawman. This book, published in 1974, remains the definitive biography of Pat Garrett. The book is a wonderful read and is the product of extensive, original research, including interviews with Garrett family members and people who knew Garrett. The book includes about 50 photos, many discovered by Metz in his research.

Metz ends his discussion of Pat Garrett’s killing in that book with the following statement:

“Pat was laid to rest on March 5, 1908, in the shabby, overgrown, northwest corner of the Las Cruces Odd Fellows Cemetery. In 1957, he and those family members who lay beside him were transferred to the Masonic Cemetery across the road. On a large granite stone is inscribed the single word: GARRETT. One can search across all of New Mexico, and indeed the entire Southwest today, and find no other monument to his memory.”

It is incumbent upon Las Cruces to rectify the absence of a monument to this New Mexico lawman and pioneer by setting aside space for a park and a memorial in the East Mesa annexation at the location where Pat Garrett was killed and where his son Jarvis constructed a marker to his Father’s life.