Roosevelt County sits in eastern New Mexico and was created in 1903 from Chaves and Guadalupe Counties. Roosevelt County was named for Theodore Roosevelt, the twenty-sixth President of the United States, who had enlisted in the New Mexico Rough Riders when he climbed San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War. Portales, the county seat, is the home of Eastern New Mexico University and it is near the major Blackwater Draw archaeological discoveries of “Bison Nomads” who lived in the area. Today Roosevelt County has the second largest milk cooperatives in the nation as well as the growing and processing of the delicious Valencia peanut.
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Roosevelt County was created in 1903 from Chaves and Guadalupe Counties. Portales is the county seat.
The Place Names of New Mexico, revised Edition by Robert Julyan, University of New Mexico Press, 1998.