by Candolin Cook on
FLAMES WHIP ACROSS the northeast corner of Alexander McSween’s adobe home as smoke turns the yard hazy, engulfing Sheriff George Peppin’s posse, who set the blaze. Inside, the lawyer McSween shelters William H. Bonney—better known as Billy the Kid—and a handful of fellow Regulators whom the lawmen have been ordered to bring in, dead or alive.
Suddenly, the outlaws charge from the burning house, guns blazing in each hand as they sprint for cover behind the cottonwoods along the Río Bonito. When the smoke clears, Billy and two of his companions have vanished. McSween and three others lie lifeless in the grass.
The man wearing a tin star steps forward and addresses the sizable crowd gathered around the property in the heart of Lincoln, a small village in the Bonito Valley. “The death of Alexander McSween marked the end of the Five-Day Battle,” he booms, “the climax of the Lincoln County War.” The audience breaks into applause, their cellphones raised to capture the scene. “Our next show, The Capture of Billy the Kid at Stinking Springs, is at 3 p.m. in front of the Aragon Store ruins,” the reenactor announces.
Transporting visitors to the summer of 1878 comes easily during Old Lincoln Days, the annual celebration that takes over the town in southeast New Mexico for the first weekend of August. The festival commemorates the Lincoln County War, a violent feud between rival business factions—the powerful Murphy-Dolan mercantile operation, known as the House, and the upstart Tunstall-McSween partnership—that drew in young Billy the Kid and cemented his legend. Historical reenactments, lectures, live music, a petting zoo, and a parade unfold against much of the original streetscape where the conflict played out. Each night, the festivities culminate in a 90-minute, open-air performance of The Last Escape of Billy the Kid, the oldest continuously running folk pageant in the nation.
But Lincoln’s appeal extends well beyond the festival weekend. Visitors can step into one of the most remarkably preserved frontier towns in the West all year round.
Spread across roughly a quarter-mile stretch of US 380, Lincoln Historic Site encompasses 17 structures dating from the 1850s to the 1880s. Home to fewer than 200 residents, the village functions not as a collection of dormant landmarks but as a place where history still shapes daily life. Among them are the still-operating Wortley Hotel; the Luna-Chavez House, a Western art gallery; and the Dr. Woods House, a living-history space that reopened during the 2025 Old Lincoln Days celebration after a lengthy interior restoration.
“Lincoln is the most intact 19th-century town in New Mexico and has the highest concentration of Territorial Style buildings left in the Southwest,” says Oliver Horn, regional manager for the historic site. The town, however, is not frozen in time, he asserts. “It’s a community that leverages its history to be forward-looking.”
AFTER THE SHOOT-OUT LAST AUGUST, I head east down Calle la Placita—dubbed “the most dangerous street in America” in 1878 by President Rutherford B. Hayes—and follow a woman in a bonnet and bustle into the Tunstall Store. Built in 1877, the mercantile served as headquarters for English-born rancher and businessman John Tunstall, whose January 1878 murder by members of the House transformed his ranch hands into the revenge-seeking Regulators. Today, the long adobe building operates as a museum, where shelves brim with original 19th-century merchandise—coffee tins, Balmoral boots, tonic bottles.
Near the back, “Billy” poses for pictures. It’s Ren Dubois’s first year playing New Mexico’s most infamous citizen in the daytime reenactments as part of the Fort Worth–based Marrow Bone Springs Gunfighters troupe. Carrizozo native Brian Sanchez and his son, Ryan, stop to chat with him and Elaine Allen, president of the Friends of the Lincoln Historic Site, which helps sponsor the weekend. “Lincoln really is like going back in time,” says Ryan, decked out in a cowboy hat, wool vest, and leather holster slung at his hip.
The Sanchezes are proud descendants of José Chávez y Chávez, the Regulator portrayed by Lou Diamond Phillips in the 1988 film Young Guns and its 1990 sequel; a third installment is reportedly in the works. “Everyone here is related to somebody,” Brian says with a laugh.
For many locals, the weekend offers a chance to connect with family history, but it also provides an opportunity to lean into the lore. “It’s the Super Bowl,” Brian says. “It’s romanticized, of course, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing—but the real thing is just as gripping.”
MYTH VERSUS REALITY IS A HOT TOPIC across the street at Bonito Valley Brewing Company. Built in 1866, the former livery and residence is said to be where Billy the Kid once hid from Fort Stanton soldiers inside a flour barrel. Now, as the only bar in a town without a restaurant, the taproom—with its vintage wood floors, vigas, and Old West saloon charm—has become Lincoln’s de facto living room since opening in 2017. “We kind of figured it would be a community center, but we didn’t realize how much,” says co-owner John Boutte. During Old Lincoln Days, that role goes into overdrive. “It’s the busiest weekend of the year for us,” adds Melissa Boutte, John’s wife and business partner. “I usually don’t even get to step foot outside.”
Over pints of house-brewed L.G. Murphy Dry Irish Stout and Lincoln Logger lager, locals and tourists debate familiar questions: How many men did Billy kill? Did Sheriff Pat Garrett really shoot him down, or did he escape and live on as Brushy Bill Roberts, as Young Guns propagates? Was he a folk hero or a scoundrel? “They say he was fluent in Spanish, and wherever he went, everybody welcomed him,” says Ray Paiz of Portales, whose ancestors passed down firsthand stories about the Kid. “He was a good friend of everybody.”
The unanswered questions—and the room they leave for competing interpretations—help explain why the story of the Lincoln County War endures nearly 150 years later. “I think people are fascinated because there’s still so much about Billy that’s a mystery,” says Lincoln historian and resident Amy Gauthier. “There was a charisma about him that made the people here just completely embrace him, and they still do to this day.”
Gauthier understands that pull better than most. After moving to Lincoln from Salt Lake City in 2024, she purchased and began restoring the historic Ellis House, an 1876 adobe that has served over the years as a general store, private residence, tuberculosis sanatorium, and, during the Five-Day Battle, a Regulator stronghold. Today, it functions as both her home and a multi-suite Airbnb. “I wanted to save it,” she says. “These places go from historic sites to historic rumors really quickly.”
For Gauthier, one of Lincoln’s greatest strengths is the community that has formed around this shared mission. “We’re just the most random, bizarre collection of people,” she says with a laugh. “But we all take on this role as preservers and educators of history. Every building has a story.”
That sentiment resonates with Charles “Billy” and Tammy Rogers, Bonito regulars and self-proclaimed “retail cowboys.” The couple opened the Billy the Kid Gift Shop in town just two weeks before the 2025 Old Lincoln Days celebration. Their store occupies a building that has lived many lives—as a blacksmith shop, a general store, several bars, and more—and now sells books, candy, T-shirts, and souvenirs to visitors chasing the Kid’s story. Billy, whose family has owned the Old Mesilla iteration of the gift shop since the 1970s, says he had been quietly eyeing Lincoln properties for years, hoping to land in one of the town’s landmarks. But history was only part of the draw. “Once you meet one or two people here, you kind of get sucked in,” he says. “What do they say?” Tammy asks, rhetorically, “You don’t choose Lincoln, it chooses you.”
As a neon-sherbet sunset settles over the brewery’s namesake river valley, it’s time to head toward the pageant grounds. Before leaving, I pause on the packed patio to watch a man in period dress with a white handlebar mustache and an antique rifle lead the crowd in a chant:
“Come on, rain!
Do it well!
We live in New Mexico
And it’s hot as hell!”
With a final holler, he fires a volley of blanks into the sky.
OUT ON CALLE LA PLACITA, I STICK OUT my thumb to catch the free horse-drawn wagon that runs through town during the festival. Squeezing in beside two little girls in pink cowgirl hats, I watch as their dad points out the Torreón, an 1850s stone defensive tower, and the Convento, a site of violence during the war that became a house of worship and, later, an interpretive site. Glancing around, I notice no one on the wagon—or even on the street—is looking at a phone, a rarity made easier by Lincoln’s lack of cell service. In a town so associated with the past, I’m struck by how naturally it pulls everyone into the present moment.
I hop off at the Old Lincoln County Courthouse, best known as the place where Billy the Kid made his infamous 1881 jail-cell escape, killing deputies James Bell and Bob Olinger before riding out of town for the last time. Today, the two-story stuccoed-adobe building is a history and art museum, featuring a wall marked by purported bullet holes from the jailbreak.
Just beyond, the crowd gathers for The Last Escape of Billy the Kid, the folk pageant that has been reenacting Lincoln’s defining legend since 1940. Seated on rustic tiered benches overlooking the open-air stage, the audience hushes as the lights come up, illuminating a miniature Lincoln complete with wooden facades of its iconic buildings, a plaster Torreón, and flickering streetlights. A Spanish folk hymn performed live rings through the speakers as local schoolchildren carrying crosses and luminarias form a haunting procession toward the San Juan Mission set piece.
Soon, actors race real horses through the dust, their gunshots cracking against the hillside as the script builds toward Billy’s climactic break from the courthouse. Once freed from his shackles, the outlaw commandeers a horse and rides into the night. The play’s narrator concludes: “Among these dusty streets still walk the memories of men who lived when the West was young, and the same life—without its tragedies—is lived today in Lincoln.”
While it’s not exactly Broadway, the more than 100 local volunteers who sew costumes, wrangle horses, operate lights, or portray historical figures—some even playing their own ancestors—create something far more personal. Few productions can claim this kind of connection to its source material.
“It’s almost like a family reunion,” says Kent McInnes, who grew up in Lincoln and served as president of the pageant for nearly 30 years. “You have to really trust someone that’s got a .44 or .45 pointed in your direction.”
In the 2025 pageant, McInnes’s son Brett plays Billy, a role originated by the late Roswell-born artist Peter Hurd in 1940. Kent contributes from the announcer booth, voicing several of the male characters. “You’re not going to find [another] true folk pageant where they have voices and actors that are totally separate,” McInnes says. “We do that out of tradition.” His favorite part? “At the end of the show, they let the little kids come up and talk to Billy. I just love watching their faces glow.”
As the crowd disperses into the darkness and volunteers begin stacking props, I’m reminded that Lincoln’s greatest assets aren’t the historic buildings or even its legends. They are the people who continue showing up to tell—and listen to—its stories. “I fell in love with Lincoln when I was 12 years old,” says Friends of the Lincoln Historic Site’s Elaine Allen. “I love the way it feels, and especially our community—and the Billy the Kid stuff is cool, too.”
Senior Editor Candolin Cook would like to publicly petition Emilio Estevez for a Young Guns 3 set visit once filming begins in New Mexico.