Place:  Pancho Villa State Park

Location:  Columbus, New Mexico   

Person interviewed:  Adriana Zizumbo and Lawrence Haddad, Owners, Borderlands Café

How this site benefits you and your community: “I grew up here and Lawrence is from New Orleans and neither of us really felt the impact of Pancho Villa State Park until we started running the Borderlands Café a year and a half ago. With the amount of snowbirds who travel from all over the world to see the historic site of the Pancho Villa Raid and Camp Furlong, our business is dependent on the tourism dollars those visitors bring to the town of Columbus. In our restaurant, we have had people from London, France, and Italy who are fascinated with the history of Pancho Villa.

Thanks to the Land and Water Conservation Fund, Pancho Villa State Park attracts tourists and brings tourism dollars to our community of 1,600 people. We are a small town and having this historical site as one of the reasons people come here is vital to our economy. This is so important for our business, which is very reliant on tourists who visit the park and then stop to eat at our restaurant. It is a great revenue generator for us!”

(Credits: Ted of DGAR/Flickr for Camp Furlong Days historic reenactment photo; K. Schneider/Flickr for Curve Billed Thrasher photo.)