Clayton Mayor Ernest Sanchez stands among the dinosaur statues outside the Clayton tourist information center Wednesday afternoon and speaks about nearby attractions, including Clayton Lake State Park and Dinosaurs Trackways.
One of Sanchez’s major goals is to use the money generated by recreational cannabis to repair the town’s roadways.
A motorcyclist passes one of the many recreational cannabis shops in Trinidad, Colo., on Wednesday evening.
Trinidad, just a little over an hour and a half from Clayton, has more than 25 cannabis dispensaries for recreational and medical users.
“That used to be a drug store,” he said, pointing to a large building a few blocks from the train tracks.
Main Street is now a series of shuttered businesses, reflecting the steady economic decline of a place that once depended upon ranching and the railroad for its livelihood.
“It’s going to help us, absolutely,” said Sanchez, driving past a medical cannabis dispensary along U.S.
As small towns in New Mexico ponder an uncertain future, the arrival of legal cannabis cannot come too soon.
Union County, of which Clayton is the seat, has seen its population stagnate; its 2019 numbers are almost identical to what they were in 1990.
Economic opportunities are slim.
Trinidad, located on Interstate 25 not far from Raton, has done well in selling marijuana to people from New Mexico and Texas.
“The population of Texas within 90 miles is almost the population of New Mexico,” said O’Donnell.
Ultra Health has 25 medical dispensaries in New Mexico, and the company is close to completing a new greenhouse in Bernalillo.
Ultra Health’s arrival in Clayton in 2018 was an economic bright spot even before the prospect of legalized marijuana became real.
Kimberly Schultz, owner of Trinidad’s first dispensary, Higher Calling, said recreational marijuana sales have helped fuel the town’s economic upturn.
For Sanchez, whose roots in Clayton stretch to the 1800s, those are words to live by.
“It isn’t what it was when I was a child, or even what it was when my kids were growing up,” he said, maneuvering his truck through the potholed streets in the direction of the nearby Northeast New Mexico Detention Facility, a state prison that is the town’s primary job creator.
“You’d never know this little town exists unless you have a reason to come here,” she said in her office.
Sanchez wants to commission an artist to paint over the faded mural on the wall of the old pharmacy.
“It’s something we’ve considered and talked about,” said Sanchez.
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