This 1926 photo would have originally been in black & white, then colorized back in the day by the hand of a skilled artisan. Even the 1926 Commercial license plate on the headlight bar is rendered in the correct black-on-grey colors for that year. The scene is in northern New Mexico and the 1926 registration records tell us that the tour bus is a 1926 White Motor Company “special,” serial number GRB2090, weighing in at a hefty 9,600 lbs. The vehicle was registered to the Santa Fe Transportation Company, based in Santa Fe. Courtesy Western Vintage Photos and Relics.




Etta and George North next to the 1921 Ford Model T touring car owned by Raymond Helweg of Helweg, NM. Raymond’s father, Benjamin N. Helweg, homesteaded here in about 1913 and opened a store which was later the site of the Helweg Post Office, 1922-1934. Courtesy Rick Holben.





Although partially obscured by the car’s starting crank, the full serial number on this 1926 plate is 44098. The car is a 1926 Ford Model T roadster, registered to William Middleton Nelson “Bob” Beverly of Lovington. The boy on the hood of the car is William Walter Beverly (who went by Walter), and the man on the horse is James “Jim” Pernell Beverly, both of them sons of Bob. The horse’s name was Dutch. Bob Beverly was sheriff of Lea County 1931-32. The photo was taken on Jim Beverly’s ranch, a few miles NW of Lovington. Courtesy David L. Minton.

Fulgencio C. De Baca of Clayton, N.M., 1926, with his 1926 Dodge Coupe. Author’s Collection.

E.G. Minton was the owner of this 1924 Buick touring car when his six-year-old son William sat on the hood for a photo in 1926. Courtesy David L. Minton.

Although the official archival title of this photo refers to the vehicle as a “United States Agency truck,” the registration records for 1926 say that plate # 21547 was registered to P. Clinton Bortell of Gallup for a 1916 White touring car. The “White” marque is distinctly readable on the radiator, and White, though it did make some cars, was primarily a maker of trucks. A serial number search for prior years shows that this was in fact a truck, which in 1923 was owned by the New Mexico State Highway Department. As the truck in 1926 was ten years old, it may well be that Bortell bought the vehicle as surplus and modified it to transport tourists to the nearby Indian reservations, thereafter registering it as a “touring car.”   Photographer: T. Harmon Parkhurst; Title: New Mexico Governor Richard Dillon (?) and man examining concho belt by United States Agency truck on rural road; Date: 1926; Courtesy of the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives (NMHM/DCA); Negative Number 166078.

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