Patrick Floyd Jarvis Garrett

Pat Garrett was one of the frontier West's most famous and effective law officers, an imposing and implacable foe of western criminals who became sheriff after impressing Roswell's J.C. Lea and John Chisum while trailing and dispatching a group of Comanche raiders. Though honest and honorable and much more than the "Slayer of Billy the Kid," he became best known for capturing Billy the Kid, whose escape from the Lincoln County Courthouse after killing two jailers led Garrett in early July 1881 to ride with two deputies to Fort Sumner, where near midnight on July 14, 1881, at the nearby Maxwell Ranch, he shot and killed the outlaw, an incident that haunted him and contributed to a controversial aftermath and his failed re-election bid. Garrett then retired to land granted by Roswell's town fathers, sought life as a gentleman farmer, and became a principal in a large water project using dams and canals to move water through the lower Pecos Valley, helping boost agri-business though failing to meet the project's financial demands. He returned to law enforcement, politics, and horse trading, associated with leading regional figures, ran unsuccessfully for office, headed a group of rangers, tried ranching, and occasionally raised fast horses. After Colonel Albert Fountain and his son disappeared in the White Sands area, Garrett identified and prosecuted the alleged murderers, but political maneuvering freed the accused. Later appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt as a customs official in El Paso, he eventually retired to a small ranch east of Las Cruces, where disputes after goats were introduced onto leased land ended when Wayne Brazel shot him in the back on February 29, 1908, while Garrett was en route to Las Cruces; Brazel was acquitted on grounds of self-defense. Roosevelt said Garrett had brought law and order to New Mexico, and the storied frontier sheriff was buried in Las Cruces beneath a simple stone engraved "GARRETT."

Roswell, New Mexico · United States