When the first train pulled into the area that would soon become New Albuquerque, there was nothing, literally nothing besides the converted boxcars that served as a makeshift depot, there. The Villa de Alburquerque, where people lived, where saloons and inns and the post office were located, lay a mile-and-a-half to the west of the rail line, and only a rough winding road traversed the empty, sand flat between them.
Within a day, that had changed. On April 23, 1880, an enterprising ne’er-do-well named Peter “Shorty” Parker (no relation) dug a hole in the ground near the spot where the railroad tracks met the rough road to the Villa, deposited a few dozen bottles of beer and covered it up with planks. This, believe it or not, was Shorty’s idea of a saloon, and with the subsequent addition of an empty barrel on which a customer could lean, it was complete. For a quarter dollar, Shorty sold beer, cool due to its being stored underground, to railroad workers and travelers, and was reasonably successful until another saloon, an infinitely fancier establishment that afforded its customers the luxury of a canvas tent in which to stupefy, opened up nearby. Shorty left soon after, his business plan, which relied on both squatting on land he didn’t own and being the only game in town, no longer viable.
At first, the town site grew slowly, but by the end of 1880, the building boom had set in in earnest. To get an idea of just how dramatic New Albuquerque’s growth was, consider these statistics- in 1880, the area around the Villa boasted a population of 1,307, all of whom were residents of the Villa itself; by 1882, the year Dr. Lyon would arrive in town, the population had exploded to more than 12,000, 7,000 of whom were residents of New Albuquerque. In that time, some 466 buildings had been erected in the area adjacent to the railroad tracks, and, following the precedent set by Shorty Parker, at least nine saloons were in operation.
A toast, then, to Shorty Parker- vagrant, hustler, and pioneer.
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