MOUNTAIN PARK
Just to the east of Alamogordo, New Mexico, a range of mountains rises abruptly from the desert floor. Their peaks reach nearly ten thousand feet altitude and they are covered by thick forest. Back in the early part of this century, a narrow road snaked its way up the canyons and ridges to the little town of Cloudcroft on top of the range. A railroad was also built in the same way to pick up the pine and fir logs and take them to a sawmill in Alamogordo. The railroad was quite unique because it utilized "switch backs" to get up the steep slopes. In some places the train would go forward a short distance and then go in reverse a short distance before going forward again. In this way it climbed a "stairway" up the mountain. A special locomotive called a "Shay" was used to power the train. This engine was specially developed for use on steep mountain grades and was used in many places around the world.
About half way between Alamogordo and Cloudcroft at about the 6,000 foot level is a small village called Mountain Park. That is where John Waldrip and Lola Davis first met. Lola lived on a goat ranch in Box Canyon not far from Mountain Park. John lived in the village and worked as a brakeman on the railroad. I really don't know just how John and Lola got acquainted but they probably met at some social activity such as a "Box Supper" or some other social affair. Both their families lived there at this time. Even John's Grandmother Crum lived in Mountain Park. John also had cousins by the dozen living in the area. John and Lola were married about 1907 and their first child, Floyd, was born in 1909.
John did not intend to make a career of railroading even though the small line was a branch of the Southern Pacific and would have offered opportunities for advancement. It was his plan to own a cattle ranch and to this end he began working. Each payday he purchased a cow. The very first one was a Jersey milk cow. This was a very significant acquisition since John hated dairy stock. He always maintained that when a cattle buyer saw a dairy animal on a ranch he would lower his offering price by a large percentage. In spite of this, "Old Jersey" became our first cow and was a real member of our family. None of her offspring were kept for breeding purposes so she did not "contaminate" the herd.
On his days off from railroading, John worked at clearing land. There were large pine stumps left in some fields and orchards and these needed to be taken out. John had a team of horses and a stump puller consisting of a heavy cable with a drum and wooden beam. The drum would be anchored down, the cable wrapped around a stump and the horses simply went around the drum pulling the beam and winding the cable to pull the stump out. While trying to pull an extra large stump one day John was in an accident. He was behind the beam which splintered and a piece of it came back hitting him in the side breaking his wrist, two lower ribs and displacing a kidney.
This was a serious accident and called for some expert medical treatment. In Cloudcroft there was a German doctor who had an
