THE FORGOTTEN WINTER OF 1918

The village of Puerto de Luna where Margarita Padilla grew up lays thirteen miles south of Santa Rosa New Mexico. It hugs the banks of the Pecos River and in 1918 was a good place to live. The shallow slow moving Pecos was a kind river. It’s muddy waters irrigated the valley through the hot New Mexico summers...making a green ribbon through the great plains. During the fall of 1918, chili ristras decorated every adobe house with bright red teardrops as the valley got ready for the coming winter. While apples, pears, beans, and corn were being canned, giant cottonwoods covered the ground with warm snowfalls.

As the weeks slipped into the early part of October the ancient cottonwoods along the river turned their leaves towards winter. And like the trees that show gold before winters breath brings death, the people were given golden riches not knowing that death lay waiting.

It was late October when Margarita’s father returned from Kansas City, Missouri where he had been selling beef cattle. Area ranchers had a party waiting to celebrate the good price he had gotten. Hundreds of people attended. Margaritas father was honored as the hero of the day since it had been through his efforts that the deal had come about. Margarita found herself a celebrity and every ranchers son in the area begged to dance with her. Since her mothers death the year before, Margarita had been too busy raising her brothers and sisters to bother with a boyfriend. This party was her chance to find a suitor and to someday walk along the riverbank holding hands like the other young people did; but her dream of seeing one of the handsome young men was broken by the events of the next few days.

Her father complained during the party of feeling weak but blamed it on the train ride. Margarita was not so sure that rest was all he needed and her fears were realized during the buggy ride home. The thirteen miles from Santa Rosa to Puerto de Luna were easy ones and yet her father complained at every bump. By the time they got home he had a fever and she had to help him into bed. When he couldn’t be awakened the next day, Margarita sent for the doctor.

When Dr. Thompson’s model T pulled in front of Margaritas house, the postmasters wife was waiting for him. She told him her husband was also sick and needed looking at. Dr. Thompson reassured the woman then went to examine Don Francisco. The doctor found Francisco to have inflamed nose and throat passages, a high fever and sore joints. He correctly diagnosed it to be influenza and decided to take no chances with the killer illness. He had Margarita quarantine the house, making sure she understood to keep the children indoors until the illness ran its course. He showed her how to make a solution of whiskey, sugar, and quinine and how to administer it. Then thinking the virus contained.... posted a hand written sign on the gate to quarantine the house and went to examine the postmaster.

Dr. Thompson was shocked when he examined the man and found him suffering from influenza. He knew what influenza could do and of the party the day before. If there was the possibility of an epidemic, Santa Fe had to be told. By the time Dr. Thompson reached Santa Rosa late that afternoon, there were two dozen people asking for him. The notice to Santa FE never went out. Exhausted from fighting the epidemic, the Doctor fell ill three days later.

In Puerto de Luna, the deadly virus spread quickly. People took shelter from each other inside their homes but found that adobe walls could not keep the killer at bay. The postmaster was the first to die in the village and only his family dared attend the funeral. People coming to town for supplies found everyone wearing bandanas over their mouth and nose in an effort to keep from breathing the deadly virus. Within a week the people were dropping in their tracks through out the country.

Villages such as Puerto de Luna, Santa Rosa and Ft. Sumner became ghost towns as people stayed indoors, afraid to go near each other. The sound of horse drawn hearses and the wail of mourners echoed through the Pecos River valley from one end to the other. The church bell in each town rang out each death. They rang so much from sunup to sunset the people didn’t bother seeing who was being put to rest. In many towns, mass graves were dug and entire families were buried without coffin or service.

It was during the second week of the epidemic that the first of the big snows hit the valley. The cold bit through the thick adobe walls and the sound of axes woke the village every day. With most of the men sick and their supply of wood running out, old women and children chopped away. Many people took to walking along the river in hopes of finding driftwood, some passed out from fever and drowned. Blizzard after blizzard swept across the land until the people were entombed in their houses. Ranchers brave enough to come into town brought reports of sheep and cattle walking in front of the storms until they stacked up and froze. One rancher was found frozen to death and when his body was taken home it was buried along side his entire family. While he fought to save his cattle, influenza had taken his family.

The third week of the virus found a group of towns people crazy with grief in front of Margarita’s house. They carried rifles and demanded Don Francisco be sent out. They held her father responsible for the death of their loved ones. If not for a man named Jose Marquez they would have dragged him out and hung him. Jose Marquez was the sheriff and after getting the people to go home, he gave Margarita permission to shoot anyone who tried to harm her family.

The only time Margarita broke down was on the tenth day. She tried to soothe her fathers fever with a wash cloth and his hair came away in her hand. It was then that she resolved that if death was going to take one of her family, it would have to fight through her. Cat napping whenever she could, Margarita cared for her family as they lay at deaths doorstep. On the 15th day, death gave up the battle against the tough girl and turned away from the Padilla house. As she was napping, Margarita heard her fathers voice, weak and painful, ask for water. By the next day her father was up and around. Only when Margarita was sure he could take over the nursing did she lay down for a proper nights rest.

Margarita had fought the winter, influenza, those who blamed her father for bringing the killer into the valley and won. Of all the families hit by the deadly virus in the Puerto de Luna area only the Padilla household escaped intact.

The 1918 Pandemic Margarita lived through is still the worst natural disaster in the history of the world. There are no accurate death figures since the world of 1918 was rural in nature and most victims were buried without reporting; but in the United States the estimated death count for the winter of 1918 was 675,000. Worldwide the estimate was over ten million.

The anguish of those sixteen weeks has been overshadowed by World War I and most historian books make no mention of the pandemic at all. Many historians attribute our winning the war to the fact that over one half of the German Army was sick with influenza. History books may ignore the pandemic but for those who lived through it, the winter of 1918 will forever be burned in their memory. To this day, when winter sweeps across the New Mexico plains, there are many who swear they can hear the rattle of a horse drawn hearse in the wind.
As told by Margarita Padilla