Tolar, New Mexico
Tolar, New Mexico, pronounced TOL-er, is a ghost town in the northern part of Roosevelt County. It sits where New Mexico State Road 86 meets U.S. Routes 60 and 84, between Fort Sumner and Melrose. Tolar began in 1907 as a stop on the Belen Cutoff, a newer Santa Fe Railway line built to shorten the route by avoiding steep passes.
The area’s early history includes Alvin Ellender Jeter, the first settler who filed for 160 acres in 1901. His daughter, Marvie Ellen Jeter, was the first child born at Tolar in 1903. The town was named after Tolar, Texas, and a post office opened there in 1905. Tolar was platted in 1908, and a weekly newspaper, the Tribune, started that year. By 1911 about 600 people lived there.
Over time, Tolar declined. The railroad station closed in 1933, the local school closed in 1926 and joined Taiban’s district, and mining of sand and gravel continued into the 1930s. In 1905 a race riot among construction workers near the town caused several deaths, and some people were said to be buried in fills around Tolar.
The town’s most famous event occurred on November 30, 1944. An 81-car westbound freight train carrying munitions derailed after a wheel problem caused a hot box. A large fire broke out and, after firefighters arrived, a massive explosion destroyed much of Tolar. About 30 people lived in the town at the time. One resident, Jess Brown, was killed. The blast was felt hundreds of miles away. The FBI determined the explosion was an accident, not sabotage, and the incident helped spur wartime cover stories about munitions. The post office closed in 1946, with mail redirected to Taiban.
Today, nothing remains of Tolar except wide spaces along the highway. In 2014, a historical marker was placed nearby to commemorate the 1944 explosion. The site is part of the Portales Micropolitan Statistical Area, within the Clovis-Portales region.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 06:49 (CET).