About 12 miles north of Carlsbad in Eddy County along U. S. Highway 285 in southwest United States is a large dam and a lake--in the middle of the desert--and there's Brantley Lake State Park. The park, dam and lake cover land that was once Seven Rivers.

Seven Rivers was settled by people who traveled by ox wagon from Virginia to the spot where seven arroyos fed into the Pecos River. At its peak in the 1880's, the settlement had a population of about 300. There were two stores, a post office, a schoolhouse, a hotel and two saloons. Seven Rivers became the county seat of Eddy County.

Seven Rivers grew to become a stop-over for cattle drivers, a gathering place for Pecos Valley ranchers and a hangout for outlaws, gamblers and cattle rustlers. The community gained a reputation for the wild west behavior of rowdies, and its cemetery became known as the "Boot Cemetery".

It's said that shootouts were a fact of life in this frontier town. And that there were removable hinged doors on the saloons that served as stretchers for customers too slow on the draw.

The decline of the cattle industry and the development of a new community to the south--now Carlsbad--led to the virtaul abandonment of Seven Rivers by 1896.

In 1884, Charles B. and John Eddy formed a livestock company with Amos Bissell to operate in southeastern New Mexico. One of their first ventures was the Halagueno Ranch, which covered the area from Seven Rivers to La Huerta, New Mexico. In 1887, Charles B. Eddy built the Halagueno Diversion Ditch on the Pecos River 3 miles above the later site of Avalon Dam and incorporated the venture as the Pecos Valley Land and Ditch Company. He was seeking funds from a Swiss bank to attract European settlers to the clean air and sunny climate.

Decline of Seven Rivers

In 1888, former sheriff Pat Garrett (who later gunned down Billy the Kid) and promoter Charles Greene joined with Eddy to create a system of canals and flumes for diversion of water to their properties. Greene secured potential investors from the east including Robert W. Tansill, manufacturer of the Punch five cent cigar. Eddy and his partners laid out plans for a new town on the south bank of the Pecos River, which was incorporated as the town of Eddy on September 15, 1888. Later, "Eddy" was to be renamed as "Carlsbad".

In 1889, the first school in Eddy opened on South Main with 35 pupils. In 1890, the Witt brothers completed construction of a wooden flume near Eddy for irrigation. In 1890, the county seat was moved from Seven Rivers to Eddy. Seven Rivers faded in the glow of what was happening at Eddy.

In 1890, the bridge over the Pecos River at Greene Street was completed, as was Avalon Dam with its many canals. On January 10, 1891, the first railroad train arrived in Eddy on the newly-completed line from Pecos, Texas.

In 1899, by a vote of 83-43, the city residents voted to rename their community Carlsbad, after the famous European health resort, Karlsbad, Bohemia (now the Czech Republic). The mineral content and related healing properties of the water in the two cities, continents apart, was virtually identical.