Fullerton's Rangers: A History of the New Mexico Territorial Mounted Police [Hardcover]

Chuck Hornung (Author), Fred Lambert (Foreword)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0786421835 | ISBN-13: 978-0786421831 | Publication Date: October 17, 2005

In 1890, the U.S. government declared the frontier settled, and the “Wild West” was history. In the territory of New Mexico, however, crime still knew no limit and the gun was the final answer to all problems. Aware that New Mexico would never achieve statehood without effective law and order, its leaders decided they needed a mounted police force like those that had tamed Texas and Arizona. This book describes the birth of the New Mexico Mounted Police in 1905 and tells the stories of the members of the original Mounties, starting with their first captain, John F. Fullerton. It details the many challenges of their first year of operation and offers an inside look at a territorial police force in action. Information drawn from personal interviews with ranger family members (many of whom provided photographs), Fullerton’s personal papers and official Mounted Police records brings a wealth of detail to this story from New Mexico’s rich history. Fred Lambert, the last surviving member of the territorial rangers, provides a foreword.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Chuck Hornung is the vice-president of the Western Outlaw-Lawmen History Association, a member of the Historical Society of New Mexico, the English Westerners Society and the National Outlaw-Lawman History Association. He is president of the New Mexico Mounted Police Historical Society.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 269 pages
• Publisher: McFarland & Company (October 17, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786421835
• ISBN-13: 978-0786421831
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 7.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,579,031 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New Mexico's Rangers get their due, April 28, 2006

By 

Mark Dworkin (Thornhill, Ontario) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fullerton's Rangers: A History of the New Mexico Territorial Mounted Police (Hardcover)

The author has been writing about the New Mexico Rangers for well over thirty years, and this book is a culmination of his long immersion into this subject. What writers like Bill O'Neal and Robert Utley have done for the Arizona and Texas Rangers respectively, Hornung has now done for the New Mexico Rangers. With research into official records and personal papers, interviews with ranger descendents, and a passion for having these men remembered accurately, Hornung has shown how the Rangers helped to make New Mexico a secure state for settlement.

The Foreword to this book is a treasure that will stand by itself, a 1969 letter written to Hornung by the last surviving New Mexico Territorial mounted policeman, Fred Lambert. Lambert was a living repository of stories of the various rangers the author writes about in the book, and the old Ranger has pithy comments about them, about the "tough business" of law enforcement in his day, and the need for a lawman to have a "quick trigger finger." Movingly, Lambert conveys his pride in having been a New Mexico Ranger. He ends by giving Hornung some good old-fashioned advice about looking men in the eye. He asks Hornung to tell the unvarnished truth, with no dime novel heroics, and to tell how those early policemen had a job to do, and "just done it."

Fullerton's Rangers is about the origins and especially the initial year, 1905, of the New Mexico Mounted Police. The early chapters of the book provide geographical and historical context for the Mounties' story. He tells of New Mexico Territory's reputation as a lawless land, its vast mountains and its unforgiving deserts. He writes the role of women in the era, about relations between the Anglo and Hispanic communities, and of its political factions and violent history. The passage to statehood was not easy. Nor was the enactment of the Mounted Police Bill that constituted the force that changed New Mexico's lawless image.

Fullerton, Governor Miguel Otero, and each of the original members of the force are sketched at length as to their history, character, and accomplishments. Fullerton, who became the leader of the Rangers, was a complex figure of considerable strengths and weaknesses. He suffered a political meltdown, costing him his job. He was replaced in 1906 by Fred Fornoff, a former Rough Rider, at a time when ex-Rough Riders were being promoted by President Theodore Roosevelt for such jobs.

Hornung writes with great care and passion about the hardships and accomplishments of each individual ranger. The longest chapter is a narrative of manhunts and arrests, successes and failures, and dangers faced by each individual ranger who served under Fullerton. There are sections on uniforms, weapons, badges, even use of the then new-fangled Gillette safety razors. The author writes about what seems an incredible miserliness and penny-pinching by the state fathers, and about conflicts between the rangers and resentful local law-enforcement authorities. Yet somehow Fullerton made it work. He got the most out of his hard living, hard drinking force, hard fighting force, suppressing the plague of cattle rustling and other crimes. It seems hard to argue with the Hornung's conclusion that Fullerton's Rangers have been misunderstood and underrated, and that they fearlessly blazed a trail of law enforcement for the men in the motorized flivvers who followed, and their successors today.