Then the remnants of Lucy came into view: the walls of a ruined school house looming beyond a solitary old farmhouse, the latter’s fences intact, curtains hanging in the window and the number 13 by the front door.

Still out of sight, however, was the treasure across the street. We spent a lot of time in the Lucy Cemetery, marked then only by scattered, tilting fence posts. It would have been easy to miss if we hadn’t been on foot. Fences were down, the tombstones toppled by wandering cattle.

Today the two sides of Lucy’s street couldn’t be more different.

On the east side, the school walls are gone. The little house burned down.

But on the west side, the cemetery has risen like a phoenix, taking its place as Lucy’s landmark, its spirit and legacy. Sturdy red corral bars and net wire protect its plots from cattle; headstones have been raised up and righted. In a large black arch over the corral-quality gate, lettered metal carries the “Lucy Cemetery” name.

Bernadine Harper Creager, whose mother Willie Belle Boyd Harper is buried in Lucy (b. 1894, d. 1933), was dismayed at the cemetery’s condition when she came up one day from her southern New Mexico home in Anthony. And she decided to do something about it.

She talked to fellow Lucy native Armon Austin, who suggested calling rancher Leroy Humphries. “My mother died when I was 2 and my father would take me to play ball at the cemetery rather than a park. So, I grew up liking cemeteries,” Humphries noted. Humphries drew plans for a fence to encircle the cemetery, got materials at a discount and had his ranch manager, Allen Brown, weld pipe and do construction. Brown’s two children helped. Austin provided the gate and Creager’s daughter Judy Hilger came up with the cemetery arch.

On June 23, 2013, the Harper family and others gathered to rededicate the newly cleaned and protected cemetery in the memory of all who are buried there. Austin died this past February at the age of 95, but Creager noted, “He lived long enough to see his dream come true, the cemetery refurbished. That was part of our goal. He cried when he saw it.” Austin’s daughter, Bonnie Sue Thomas, brought him out to the rededication in a wheel chair and will accept Austin’s EMHS Award of Recognition on his behalf. “I would like to honor my Dad,” she said.

“Daddy was born and raised at Lucy,” she added. “He has nobody buried in that cemetery. It’s just part of his heritage and where he went to school as a child.” Boyd Harper, Bernadine Creager’s brother, was a classmate.

In an oral history conducted in 2007 for the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum, Armon T. Austin described the town of Lucy as having a school, depot, blacksmith, justice of the peace, two stores, a post office and gas station, plus a ladies’ auxiliary. According to Legends of America, Lucy also was the original location of the Cline's Corners Trading Post, before Roy Cline moved it to the more frequently traveled Route 66.