Where was Billy the Kid’s Santa Fe Jail?

ROSWELL, N.M. - Feb. 10, 2014 - PRLog -- Roswell, NM - Like many tourists today, the young outlaw Billy the Kid arrived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, one cold December evening as heavy snows blanketed its picturesque Sangre de Cristo Mountains. He had missed the farolitos of Christmas, but local hostesses were busy preparing to welcome the New Year into their adobe homes.

Unlike most vacationing tourists, however, Billy spent his time in Santa Fe trying desperately to get out of its less-than-welcoming adobe jail.

He consulted lawyers.

He wrote the governor — repeatedly.

He even tried digging his way out.

Nothing worked.

Billy only “escaped” from “the safest jail in the Territory” the following March when deputies escorted him to the railroad station for a trip to southern New Mexico. There, a jury of his peers waited to convict him of murder.

But just where in Santa Fe did this surprisingly invincible jail stand? Today, two plaques mark the spot, or rather, two competing spots . . .

Now, Billy the Kid enthusiast and longtime New Mexico resident Lynn Michelsohn has tracked down historical sources that pinpoint that adobe jail’s long-disputed location for her book, Billy the Kid’s Jail, recently published in paperback by Cleanan Press (http://www.cleananpressbooks.com/).

“We have long known where Santa Fe’s jail stood in 1877,” Michelsohn explained, “and where it stood in 1883. But which of these two buildings housed the jail when Billy checked in on December 27, 1880?”

In the process of researching this question, Michelsohn discovered much more interesting information about early New Mexico jails and jailbreaks than she first expected. “The search has been as enjoyable as finding the answer,” the author added. “It’s easy to lose ones self in the fascinating details of life on the Southwestern frontier in the 1880s, as well as in the colorful phrases and delightfully sardonic wit of that era’s newspaper reporting.”

Michelsohn’s research indicates that jails were a low priority during New Mexico’s Territorial days. They often occupied repurposed structures or new buildings hastily constructed of adobe or other weak materials. Officials in southern New Mexico’s Lincoln County even jailed Billy the Kid in a covered hole in the ground on one occasion.

Jailers relied more on chains and shackles than jailhouse design to retain their charges. A visitor once noted that the door to the Taos County jail was “securely fastened” with a piece of twine.

As might be imagined, escapes were a frequent problem. In Santa Fe, a group of inmates simply walked out of an older jail one night, never to be seen again. On another occasion, after inmates escaped by digging their way through its adobe wall, a newspaper reporter noted, “A prisoner armed with a toothpick or a sharp lead pencil can now consider himself equipped for escape.”

And of course, Billy himself did try digging his way out of his Santa Fe jail. Only an alert sheriff, and a bribed “snitch,” thwarted the attempt.

But where was that Santa Fe jail Billy the Kid tried so hard to leave behind?

When asked what her research determined its location to be, Michelsohn replied with a smile, “Read my book. It describes the clues I followed and the outcome, in what I hope is an interesting manner, sort of a ‘history detective’ adventure. You will also learn a lot more than you ever knew you wanted to know about Santa Fe’s jails.”

Lynn Michelsohn’s brief but highly informative book, Billy the Kid’s Jail (http://www.amazon.com/Mexico-Glimpse-History-Southwests-F...)  (82 pages, 16 illustrations), is available in paperback from Amazon and other booksellers for $7.95 and in ebook format from Amazon, iTunes, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo for $2.99.