Carlsbad, New Mexico: How Eddy Traded Its Name for a Spa's

Carlsbad, New Mexico, started out as Eddy, until a retired Chicago cigar man named some local springs after a European spa and talked the town into following. His argument was simple: you couldn’t advertise a name like Eddy.

First it was going to be Halagueno

The town began in 1888, the year a party of Chicago people toured the Pecos Valley, a trip that led to the Pecos Irrigation and Improvement Company. One of them was Robert W. Tansill, who’d made his fortune in the cigar business with a brand called “Punch,” retired in 1887 for his health, and toured the famous health resorts of America and Europe. That’s according to his biography in a 1907 History of New Mexico.

The same book says the party camped at the Eddy brothers’ ranch, and that when Charles B. Eddy told Mrs. Tansill some people meant to start a town, she suggested calling it Eddy. Tansill’s own version, which the book also prints, adds a detail. Eddy, he wrote, “had determined to give this town the Spanish name ‘Halagueno’” in October 1888, but “admiring friends, wishing to honor him, suggested the name of ‘Eddy.’” Henry Gannett, compiling place names for the U.S. Geological Survey in 1905, confirms the county side of it: Eddy County was “named in honor of C. B. Eddy, a prominent citizen.”

The springs nobody noticed

Here’s the twist. Before the town changed its name, the springs did. Tansill wrote a circular, “To the Citizens of Eddy,” and in it he explained that the springs near town had been known as “Tansill Springs.” Then he corrected himself: “No, I will not say known, for as ‘Tansill Springs’ no one ever gave them a second thought.”

About a year before he wrote, he says, someone had proposed the name Carlsbad for the city. Tansill liked it and tried it out on the springs first. “I suggested applying the name of ‘Carlsbad’ to the springs, owing to the resemblance of the waters to those of their German namesake. It was done, and the effect has been electrical.” The Carlsbad he meant was the famous European spa. Tansill called it German; a 1903 booklet from New Mexico’s Bureau of Immigration calls it “Carlsbad, Austria,” and prints a side-by-side chemical analysis of the two waters to prove the point.

Selling the town on a new name

Tansill’s circular wasn’t shy. Since the town got its name, he argued, the healing power of the springs had been demonstrated, and that was “worth millions of dollars to this town and valley, if properly advertised.” Then the question: “do you consider it wise to continue for our town a name that has neither meaning or significance, and one which we do not and can not advantageously advertise?” He added that he didn’t mean “any reflection upon the name of Eddy.”

His biography says Mrs. Tansill “agitated this change until it was finally adopted by a vote of the people.” The change went through in 1899: that November, the Monthly Weather Review listed its New Mexico weather station “Eddy, changed to Carlsbad.” By 1903 the Bureau of Immigration booklet was describing “Carlsbad, the Beautiful, at first named Eddy,” and saying the springs of Carlsbad, Austria, “gave the county seat of Eddy its name.” In 1917, Ralph Emerson Twitchell’s state history said the same about “the famous Carlsbad Spring, from which the town and project both take their names.”

Charles Eddy didn’t lose out completely. The county is still Eddy County, so you’ll find his name on the map around the town that used to carry it. And if you look across the Pecos on the 1939 map above, Tansill got a spot too: Tansill Dam.

Sources & further reading

• History of New Mexico: Its Resources and People, vol. 2 (1907), pp. 781-782. Tansill’s biography: the “Punch” cigar, his retirement in 1887, the 1888 trip, the camp at the Eddy brothers’ ranch, Mrs. Tansill and both names, and his circular “To the Citizens of Eddy,” with “Halagueno,” “Tansill Springs” and the argument for Carlsbad.
• Bureau of Immigration of the Territory of New Mexico, Eddy County, New Mexico (1903), pp. 49-51. The springs compared with “Carlsbad, Austria, which gave the county seat of Eddy its name,” the water analysis, and “Carlsbad, the Beautiful, at first named Eddy.”
• Ralph Emerson Twitchell, The Leading Facts of New Mexican History, vol. 3 (1917). Eddy County named for Charles B. Eddy and Carlsbad “first known by the name of Eddy” (p. 224); “the famous Carlsbad Spring, from which the town and project both take their names” (p. 229).
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905). Eddy County “named in honor of C. B. Eddy, a prominent citizen.”
• Monthly Weather Review, November 1899. The federal weather station’s name correction: “New Mexico, Eddy, changed to Carlsbad.”
• GNIS feature 887199 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record and coordinates for Carlsbad.