The Old Mill of Ruidoso
By J.Young

On a busy street known as Suddereth Drive in what is now Ruidoso, used to be nothing but an old trail with a gristmill along the river. It is The Old Dowlins Mill. The mill is in a beautiful valley at an elevation of about 6,919 feet. Water once flowed from the Ruidoso and Carazo Creek to run the water mill and power the grinding stones, turning grains into flour or wheat middlings.

Around 1868 Dowlin’s Mill was constructed. It was just a couple years later and the area was destroyed by flooding. The wheel of the mill was saved and Captain Dowling rebuilt the operation a little further up, still using the waters from the Ruidoso to turn the wheels.
Captain Paul Dowlin served at Fort Stanton with LG Murphy and liked. Like many of his fellow officers, Captain Dowlin settled in the area and after building the gristmill with his brother William, business began and was called Paul Dowlin and Brother. The gristmill was  pumped out grains and flour and supplied to Fort Stanton.

When LG Murphy and Dolan were forced out of the Army at Fort Stanton, the Dowlin brothers took over their business affairs at the Fort, including using the mill to pump out big profits at Fort Stanton’s trading post.
On April 28th 1877, Captain Paul Dowlin became jealous when he suspected his employee, Jerry Dillon was sleeping with his wife and fired him.
The disgruntled Dillon later returned to Dowlin’s Mill and confronted Dowlin outside his home. Dowlin tried to jerk his gun out, but it got stuck and Jerry shot Dowlin in the head. Killing him.
A neighbor, Frank Coe remembers that day, “Jerry came down to my place and told me what he had done. He laid out at a spring up in the cañón with no intentions of leaving until he met with Dowlins brother, to come to some sort of settlement over The killing. I took Will up there and kept them from getting into a shooting match and mediated between them.” The agreement was made and Dillon left New Mexico for Texas.
After his brother’s death Will inherited his brother’s half of Dowlins Mill estate as well as became guardian of Paul’s children.
Within weeks, Will sold half the Mills interests to Frank Lesnett. Frank, originally from Ohio, was married in Chicago in 1876. Mr. Frank also served at Fort Stanton and was eager to bring his new bride to the territory. The couple would have seven children; Irvin, Jennie, Edith, Frank, Milton, Bessie and Georgia Lesnett.

In 1879, Will Dowlin formed a partnership with John C. Delaney. They purchased the Old Murphy store from Thomas Catron in Lincoln and it’s mercantile establishment. In December of 1880 they went bankrupt.
Will Dowlin, sold the rest of his interests at The Mill and he, his wife and the children moved to Las Cruces and soon afterwards divorced. Will died in an insane asylum in Pueblo Colorado in 1884.
On August 23rd of 1877, cattle Baron John Chisum and crew were driving a herd West into Arizona territory. The men stopped at the Mill to camp, Chisum’s cowboys got a hold of a supply of whiskey and one of them named Johnny Ewer shot himself in the leg and had to be rushed to the hospital at Fort Stanton. Also that night another Chisum cowboy, Raymond Garcia AKA Capitan, got drunk and shot J.M. Franklin in the back killing him.

Garcia ran away but was caught by a mob and lynched.

As the Lesnetts settled in, it remained known as Dowlins. Mrs. Lesnett remembers coming to New Mexico from Chicago, where she was waiting for her husband to get them settled;
“My husband met me at Fort Stanton. He was driving two big bay horses to a Studebaker The horses were named “Bill Johnson, and “Bill Dowlin ”. How happy I was when my husband met me and we drove up the beautiful canyon toward the White mountains. It was in May 1877. We went by way of the Pat Garrett Ranch, which was located on Little Creek, and on by Alto and down Gavelan Canyon to the Ruidoso. When we arrived at Dowlin’s Mill I saw some blood in the front yard. Frank told me that a man named Jerry Dalton had shot and killed Paul Dowlin the day before. Dalton left the country and was never heard of again. My new home was a four room log house, with a big fireplace in the front room, which we called the parlor. We used kerosene lamps and candles for lights. A man by the name of Johnnie Patton cooked for us. We boarded several of the men who worked in the mills and helped on the farms. At that time we had a grist mill and a saw mill. All the surrounding country brought their grain to our mill to be ground. We used oxen to haul our logs for the saw mill.We raised hogs and sold them to Fort Stanton. We raised our own feed to fatten the hogs and in the fall of the year the farm hands would butcher about a hundred hogs at a time. I would get some of the neighbor women to come and help render out the lard. We used a big iron pot and rendered the lard out in the yard. I raised lots of turkeys and chickens and sold them at Fort Stanton. I was always so afraid of the wild beasts that roamed around in the hills. I remember one time, my husband and the cook had to go to Lincoln to court, and left Mrs. Johnson with me and my three children, to stay alone at night. One night after we had all gone to bed, Mrs. Johnson and I heard something prowling around the house. We lay real still and listened, for we did not know whether it was Indians or wild beasts. We did not have to wait long to know, for it was a mountain lion and when he got up real near the house he let out a roar. We almost died of fright for we were afraid that he would break the windows and come in after us. We moved all the furniture and barricaded the doors and windows. The lion kept walking around the house and roaring. After a while he left and went down to the cow pen and killed one of our milk pen calves. I told my husband when he came home the next day, that I would never stay home with just women folks again, and I never did while we lived on the ranch. The Mescalero Indians from the Mescalero Reservation used to come to our place to trade, or to bring some grains for milling. My husband had a small store and was postmaster at Ruidoso. I saw four buck Indians have a fight in front of our store one time. They pulled each other’s hair out and fought with quirts. They fought for about an hour. I was in the store and was afraid to go to our house, although the Indians never did bother us. I was awfully afraid of them, especially when I first came to The Ruidoso. I was always good to the Indians. I gave them doughnuts and cookies when they came to the Mill and it was not long until all the Indians were my friends. Geronomo used to come to our place quite often. Once he brought me a big wild turkey and another time he gave me a nice Indian basket. I gave the basket to Mrs. Hiram Dow and she still has it. There was usually a crowd of young people at the Mill and we used to ride horseback fifteen and twenty miles to a dance, and wouldn’t ever think anything of it.“

“We lived on the Ruidoso all during the Lincoln County War but my husband never took sides with either faction. I did give Billy the Kid several meals when he would come to our place, but my husband never knew anything about it, for he had warned us not to feed any of the men from either side, but I did it anyway as I felt so sorry for them when they said they were hungry.”
On one occasion there is a wild rumor that Billy was at the mill one day and Billy was forced to hide in one of Mrs. Lesnetts flour barrels. But from whom has been unclear. Was it her husband, Mr. Lesnett? Was he hiding from Dolan men? Was he hiding from the lawmen or soldiers? I guess this one is lost…
When Billy was on death row at Lincoln, Mrs. Annie Lesnett snuck over for a visit. The guards allowed the visit. Bob Olinger invited Mrs. Lesnett back for the hanging of her friend Billy. The joke made her sick to her stomach.
Billy noticed how this made her feel and spoke up,
”Mrs. Lesnett, they can’t hang me if I’m not there, can they…

Back at the Mill, it had become a social gathering spot or plaza for the small village of settlers that grew around it. There was a proposal to switch the county seat from Lincoln to Dowlins, but it did not pass in the legislation.

In 1884 a local paper published an ad for a leap year ball at the mill. Some folks believed that Billy the Kid attended a baile here once or twice.
The Lesnetts sold the property in 1887 to the Crees, who owned the V-V ranch to the north of Dowlins.
The Lesnett’s moved to Lincoln, Roswell and back to Lincoln and had been Lincoln citizens most of their lives. Mrs. Lesnett and a son are buried at Carrizozo. Frank sr. has been reported as killed or dead near The Pecos River in Texas. Burial site is unknown.
The old Mill became surrounded with a large population over time and became the birthplace of Ruidoso, “the oasis of New Mexico” is what I refer to it as.  The Crees sold the property in the 1940s to Carmon and Leona Mae Phillips.
In 2013 the Mill was the oldest structure in Ruidoso and was placed on the New Mexico Registry of Cultural Properties, and then to the federal historic registry. The old Mill served as an art gallery, a museum and after a small stage was built, it also was used as the center of small events.  
In 2017 a gas leak caused the Mill to explode and was destroyed.

Today the Mill is owned by Delana Phillips and thanks to Phillips efforts, the Mill is somewhat still around. Together with the Old Mill Preservation Corporation, they are wanting to rebuild and are looking for help or donations.