Clovis is a city in and the county seat of Curry County, New Mexico. The population was 38,567 at the 2020 census. Clovis is located in the New Mexico portion of the Llano Estacado, in the eastern part of the state.
A largely agricultural community, close to the border with Texas, it is noted for its role in early rock music history and for nearby Cannon Air Force Base, current home to the 27th Special Operations Wing which is also known as "The Steadfast Line". A Paleo-Indian site was found near Clovis, where in 1929 a distinctive kind of stone spear-point was discovered. These points were called Clovis points, and the culture associated with them was named the Clovis culture. The Clovis people were early inhabitants who created a widespread culture in the New World. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway system helped establish Clovis over one hundred years ago, which continues to be a major hub of operations for that railroad and its successor, BNSF Railway. Also notable is the Southwest Cheese Company, the largest cheddar cheese producer in North America.
It is the principal city of the Clovis Micropolitan statistical area, which is part of the larger Clovis-Portales CSA.
History
Clovis began in 1906, when the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway was being constructed through the area and railway engineers were instructed to "locate and buy the first level section of land west of Texico" on which to build a town site and railroad facilities.
At first known as "Riley's Switch", the site was renamed Clovis. A likely-apocryphal story states that a daughter of a rail official (accounts vary whether her father was AT&SF president Edward Payson Ripley, chief engineer James Dunn, or an unnamed station master) was studying about Clovis, the first Christian king of the Franks, and proposed the name.
The land was bought on October 2, 1906, and the railroad began offering town lots for sale on May 1, 1907. The settlement built up quickly and in 1909 was incorporated.
Clovis celebrated its centennial in 2009.
The Clovis Carver Public Library was the site of a mass shooting in August 2017 in which two people were killed and four wounded.
In 2023, the FW1 Ute Reservoir pipeline project started construction to provide potable water by 2030 for Cannon Air Force Base and the communities of Clovis, Portales, Elida, and Texico.
Geography
Clovis is located in southeastern Curry County.
U.S. Routes 60, 70, and 84 pass through the city. US 60 and 84 lead west to Fort Sumner, while US 70 leads southwest to Portales and to Roswell. The three highways lead east together to the state line at Texico, New Mexico, and Farwell, Texas. Cannon Air Force Base is west of the center of Clovis.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and , or 0.73%, is water According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Clovis has a semi-arid climate, abbreviated BSk on climate maps.