Carlsbad
The settlement remained Eddy until a spring NW of town came to be reputed to have the same mineral content as the water at the famous European spa known to Germans as Karlsbad, or Carlsbad. This spa, now in Czechoslovakia and renamed Karlovy Vary by the Czechs, was founded in 1349 by Karl IV and named for him. In 1899, voters in Eddy agreed to changing their town\'s name to Carlsbad, and now the Eddy brothers are recalled only by the name of the county.
In its early days Carlsbad had two suburbs that were hangouts for outlaws: Phenix on the south side of town and Lone Wolf on the north. Neither name was official, and by 1905, the outlaws had been run out; the settlements later were absorbed into Carlsbad.
Also absorbed into Carlsbad was a settlement to the north known as La Huerta, Spanish for "the vegetable or fruit garden," named for garden plots and orchards that once supplied food for Carlsbad.
Place Names of New Mexico
by Robert Julyan
1493
Carlsbad originally had the same name as the county for which it is the seat–Eddy. In 1888, a group of the settlement\'s organizers and promoters gathered at a ford on the Pecos River called Loving Bend. There Lillian Green, a daughter of one of the promoters broke a bottle of champagne and named the town for John A. and Charles B. Eddy, brothers who held large ranch interests in the area and promoted railroad development.
Reproducing prohibited without express permission from the State Records Center and Archives.
Towns–Carlsbad. Photograph taken in 1935.
Giant shade trees arch the paved streets in Carlsbad, New Mexico. Courtesy of the State Records Center and Archives: Collection 1987-066. Department of Tourism Photo Collection; Location # 435047.