She Means Business!

An energetic and ambitious woman has come to Lincoln, New Mexico, to restore the town's legendary Ellis Store.

- LYNDA A. SÁNCHEZ

Every day for the last 50 years I have had the good fortune to look outside my window and view the structure known today as the Ellis Store (established, 1876). Its long, flowing sweep of a porch; its wood-shingled roof and expansive gardens, along with adobe walls that harbor memories of the past, are all there as they were during the brutality of the Lincoln County War, the Apache Wars and the fight against the White Plague (TB). The violence reached a crescendo during the infamous and bloody Lincoln County War, when enemy combatants fighting over land, money and probably a woman or two fired their weapons from nearby hills into the ranch house during the destructive five-day battle in July 1878. Billy the Kid no doubt visited the place when it was a ranch headquarters for Isaac Ellis. And when the war was finished, people took a step b