Crowder an NM visionary

New Mexico lost one of its visionaries last week with the passing of Charlie Crowder, a developer and land trader who fought to bring a new border crossing here.

As Journal reporter Angela Kocherga pointed out in an Upfront column last Friday, without Crowder, there would be no Santa Teresa border crossing or the $22 billion in goods that move through the port of entry or the booming industrial parks. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, that region now accounts for more than half of all of New Mexico’s global exports.

Securing the Santa Teresa border crossing was a monumental undertaking.

Jerry Pacheco, president and CEO of the Santa Teresa based Border Industrial Association, called Crowder a super-visionary and intelligent man who “had the wherewithal to put all the pieces together at the local, state and federal levels on both sides of the border.”

Crowder got federal land along the border after negotiating a deal for land in Arizona for a Native American tribe.

Crowder died at a hospital in El Paso last Tuesday after a fall. He was 86.

Born in Nebraska and raised on a farm in the Missouri Ozarks, Crowder was tenacious from the beginning, setting off on his own at age 13. He ended up in the Southwest in the 1940s, helping facilitate land deals between ranchers and the federal government. And he also did huge land trades throughout the West. Our state is fortunate he decided to make Santa Teresa his home.

Crowder refused to give up on his vision for a border crossing in Santa Teresa, even when people told him it was impossible or joked he was crazy. Instead, he dug in with dogged determination and got to work on making it a reality. And New Mexico is better off because of it.

May he rest in peace.