Thomas Oliver Boggs first came to the region that is now southeastern Colorado and New Mexico in the early 1840s, working as a trader for William Bent at Bent’s Old Fort. The work suited him and he became close friends with the Bent family. During a visit to the Bent home in Taos, then part of Mexico, he met and fell in love with the 14-year-old beauty, Rumalda Luna, of the powerful Taos family, the Jaramillo’s. She was also smitten. They married on May 22, 1846.
In 1858, Thomas partnered with Lucien B. Maxwell of Cimarron, New Mexico. Maxwell, through his marriage, controlled a massive land grant covering most of the territory in what is now northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. Boggs drove their shared herd of sheep and cattle north in the spring and summer to graze the fine grasslands.
He liked the Purgatoire River valley and recognized its potential for raising livestock and crops. He solicited Rumalda’s powerful family, including the gentlemen who owned the famous Vigil and St. Vrain land grant, Cornelio Vigil and Ceran St. Vrain. Vigil was Rumalda’s grandmother’s brother and St. Vrain was her godfather. The couple received 2,040 acres of land along the Purgatoire River.
Thomas built a small house on the property in 1862 and began pasturing livestock. In 1866 he moved his family to Colorado and built a large L-shaped, seven-room adobe home on the west bank of the Purgatoire. He built a trading store and serviced settlers in the area and travelers on the Santa Fe Trail. Before long, more settlers moved to the area and the ranching and agricultural settlement of Boggsville was born.
Though Boggs proved a successful farmer whose irrigated crops fed the U.S. Army troops at nearby Fort Lyon, he was, at heart, a sheep man. By 1872, he owned over 50,000 sheep and controlled much of the open range south of Boggsville. He also took a turn at politics. When Bent County was formed in 1870, Boggs served as the first sheriff. In 1871, he was elected to the Colorado territorial legislature. He was close friends with Kit Carson and after Carson’s death, he and Rumalda raised Kit’s five youngest children as their own.
Boggs became disillusioned when the railroad came, diverting business to the new town of West Las Animas, and Boggsville began its decline. His discontent grew when bungled congressional attempts to verify pre-existing claims after the Mexican-American War – including the giant Vigil and St. Vrain land grant – led to Rumalda’s portion of the land grant being challenged in court. The frustrated Boggs moved his family to Springer, New Mexico, in 1877 while fighting the legal battle. When Rumalda’s title was finally re-confirmed six years later, he sold the Boggsville ranch to John Lee for $1,200. Boggs remained in New Mexico for the rest of his life. He and Rumalda were buried in an old prairie cemetery near Clayton, New Mexico. Untended for years, their graves are now lost to the prairie sands.