Clovis

Clovis (population 37,775) is a city in the eastern part of the state of New Mexico, within the US. It serves as the county seat of Curry County. It is the major city in the Clovis Metropolitan Statistical Area.

The largely agricultural community is situated on the mesa known as Llano Estacado. The Cannon Air Force Base is located in Clovis. The city is also famous for its role during early rock music history.

Peoples of the Clovis culture inhabited the eastern New Mexico area during prehistoric times. Some anthropologically significant remains have been found at the Blackwater Draw site located south of Clovis, near Portales. Tourists are welcome to visit this historical site.

The city of Clovis was actually established back in the year 1906, when several Santa Fe Railroad engineers picked this site for a townsite. It was called "Santa Fe Railroad." The daughter of the station master renamed it Clovis after the very first Catholic king of the Franks.

The entire area of west Texas and east-central New Mexico is dominated by agriculture and ranching. Peanut production, cotton farming and cattle ranching are major industries. The Clovis region has several processing plants for agricultural products, like for example the Southwest Cheese Company plant that processes milk from local dairies. Located between Portales and Clovis, the plant opened in 2005 and provides work to more than 200 area residents. This huge plant processes into cheese over 2.3 billion pounds of milk each year.

A huge number of jobs are found in the services sector, with Allsup's convenience store head office as the biggest employer. The local Dillard's and Wal-Mart stores, combined with smaller regional and national supermarket chains, provide many residents with employment. Rail transport and operations have a lesser but still important impact on the local economy. The city's financial and business needs are met by institutions like Bank of America, Wells Fargo and regional financial institutions.

The Cannon Air Force Base is under constant threat of being closed down. Nevertheless, the Committee of Fifty, a local lobby group, has been established to try and keep the base operational in the city. Their efforts caused a realignment of Cannon as a special operations base.