Lucien Maxwell Statue, Cimarron, New Mexico Poster

"Statue of Lucien Maxwell, Cimarron, New Mexico" by Catherine Sherman. A folk art statue of Lucien B. Maxwell sits in front of a stone building bearing the sign "Buffalo Nickel." The Maxwell statue is holding a gun and has a stern expression, dressed in blue pants, a red vest, and a black hat. The sign beneath this folk art statue in Cimarron, New Mexico, protected by a low white picket fence, reads: Lucien B. Maxwell 1818-1875 Ruled over 2 million acre land grant which later became the Maxwell land grant. The Maxwell Land Grant, also known as the Beaubien-Miranda Land Grant, was a 1,714,765-acre Spanish grant that was the largest ever made in what would become the United States. The Santa Fe Trail passed through it. Some of this land grant is now the Philmont Scout Ranch. The only monument to Maxwell on the original grant is a concrete folk-art sculpture in Cimarron, where a mustachioed Maxwell sits, facing the west with a rifle in hand and wearing a brimmed hat on his head and bright blue neckerchief. The curator of the Aztec Museum in Cimarron said that the statue wasn’t really built for Maxwell but rather for a man named Henry Springer. But Mr. Springer didn’t like it and said: “Statues are for dead people.” So, the artist dedicated it to Maxwell instead, according to the Legends of America website. Cimarron was officially chartered in 1859 and was named for the Spanish word used to describe a mustang, meaning "wild" or "unbroken". Cimarron was the county seat of Colfax County beginning in 1872, when it replaced Elizabethtown, according to Wikipedia. At that time, Cimarron was a stage stop on the Mountain Branch of the Santa Fe Trail. In 1881, the county seat was moved to Springer, a town on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. It was during this time that Lucien Maxwell, due to rising tensions, sold his massive Maxwell Land Grant to a group of investors, with the resultant Colfax County War in which more than two hundred people were killed. Twenty-six homicides were said to have happened happened in the St. James Hotel, although not all could be attributed to the Colfax County War.