Clovis (population 37,775) is a city within the eastern portion of the state of New Mexico, in the US. It serves as the county seat of Curry County. It is the major city within the Clovis Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Clovis is an agricultural community located on the mesa known as Llano Estacado, in the eastern portion of New Mexico State. Cannon Air Force Base is situated there. The city is also noted for its role during early rock music history.
In prehistoric times, the peoples of the Clovis culture inhabited the eastern New Mexico region. Several anthropologically significant remains have been located at the Blackwater Draw site located south of the city, near Portales. Visitors are welcome to go to this historical location.
The community of Clovis dates back to 1906, when railway engineers working for the Santa Fe Railroad picked the site as a town location and called it Riley's Switch. The daughter of the station master renamed it Clovis after the first Catholic king of the Franks.
Agriculture and ranching has dominated the entire east-central New Mexico and west Texas regions. The major businesses in the region are production of peanuts, cattle ranching and cotton farming. The Clovis region has a number of processing plants for agricultural products, such as the Southwest Cheese Company plant which processes milk from local dairies. Located between Portales and Clovis, the plant opened during 2005 and provides jobs to over 200 area residents. This large plant processes into cheese more than 2.3 billion pounds of milk on a yearly basis.
Allsup's convenience store head office are situated in the city of Clovis. This business provides a huge number of jobs and is the city's largest employer. Other main employers are the local Wal-Mart and Dillard's stores, along with numerous other smaller regional and national supermarket chains. Rail operations and transport have a lesser but still vital impact on the economy of Clovis. The city's financial and business needs are met by institutions such as Bank of America, Wells Fargo and regional financial institutions.
The Cannon Air Force Base is under constant threat of being closed down. Then again, a local lobby group, the Committee of Fifty, has been established to try and keep the base operational in the city. Their efforts resulted in a realignment of Cannon as a special operations base.