I thought I was ready for pretty much anything when I began my research into Dawson’s history.

But I never expected to run smack-dab into a “breaking news” story while writing about a coal town that hasn’t existed for 70 years.

That’s what happened earlier this month when a Google News search led me to a March 10 story by Katherine Clarke of The Wall Street Journal with the headline: “Tobacco Billionaire Brad Kelley Is Selling Over 500,000 Acres for $500 Million.”

To be honest, that didn’t mean much to me until I read the subhead: “After listing ranch property in West Texas earlier this year, Kelley is asking $96 million for Dawson Elk Valley Ranch in New Mexico.”

The Dawson Elk Valley Ranch? Isn’t that what used to be the town of Dawson?

After posting the actual listing to the Dawson Facebook page, I emailed Martin Salazar, who replaced me as the city editor at the Albuquerque Journal after I retired in November 2018.

My initial instinct was to mention the story to him in case he wanted to assign it to a staff reporter. But given I knew the newsroom was strapped covering the statewide impact of the coronavirus, I offered to write the story as another option.

“Absolutely,” came the quick reply.

So after conducting telephone interviews with Hall and Hall broker Jeff Buerger and Chairman Joe Bacca of the Dawson New Mexico Association, I filed the story, which was published Sunday, April 19. You can read it here.

The potential sale of the land is of much interest to the association, which oversees historic Dawson Cemetery and organizes the biennial Labor Day weekend reunions on the old townsite with the permission of the owner or his representatives.  Technically, the cemetery and the land leading up to it are on private property, though the  cemetery has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1992.

Bacca told me he isn’t overly concerned at this time, saying: “I think we can work with the new owner.”

The Dawson community also might take some comfort in these words from the broker.  Speaking to the historical nature of the property, Buerger said:

“Typically, in my line of work, when something like this happens … people are really respectful of something like this, and the last thing they’re going to do is want to get in the way, or try to alter this, or limit use.

“Frankly, if we did run into somebody like that, we would curtail that on our end from inception. In other words, if somebody came to me and said, well, I’m going to stop all that … we’d probably say this isn’t for you.”