Into Max Evans's Hi Lo Country

Hit the road and discover the historic and mystic lands of New Mexico’s legendary author.

- JOHNNY D.BOGGS

Technically, Chama isn’t in the Hi Lo Country, but it’s a great starting point for this Renegade Road trip, as this town defines just how important Ol’ Max Evans was to New Mexico.

Who’s Ol’ Max Evans? A literary legend— once dubbed “a range-land Mark Twain”—he wrote novellas, novels, short stories, biographies and nonfiction books. Hollywood turned two of his works—The Rounders and The Hi-Lo Country (Hollywood added a hyphen)—into post-World War II Western films. He palled around with Sam Peckinpah, when they weren’t beating each other senseless. And he died August 26, three days before his 96th birthday—a long life, but even longer in Max Evans years (let’s call it 1,219).

While Evans wrote about all of New Mexico, the Hi Lo Country was the name he gave the region that shaped him and most of his writings: the windy grasslands, arroyos and buttes that cover northeastern New Mexico and stretch into southern Colorado, the Oklahoma Panhandle and parts of West Texas. “The indomitable spirit of that land should cover the world and beyond,” Evans wrote.

But Evans was more than just a writer. He was a cowboy, wrangler, artist, mystic, smuggler, actor (The Ballad of Cable Hogue), producer, under-the-table script doctor and World War II veteran who fought in France from D-Day until a mortar explosion sent him home before the Battle of the Bulge.