There has never been much to Bard, New Mexico, but, for decades it had a single store which was the centre of the tiny community. In his 1946 Guide, Jack Rittenhouse wrote that Bard ‘consists of a single building, but it includes a post office.’ At the time that Rittenhouse passed through on Route 66, the postmaster was Harry Elton Heckendorn, a native of Missouri who, with his wife Geneva, had moved to New Mexico. It appears that he started the Bard Trading Post just after the Great War and he was confirmed as the Postmaster in 1920.

In 1948, the Heckendorns sold the flourishing business to Harry and Vivian Whatley but they maintained their ties with Bard. Two of their children would die young; Helen who succumbed to a long illness in 1937 aged just 25 and John Melvin who died in 1953 of pancreatic cancer at 40, and they, along with their parents, are buried in the Bard cemetery. Bad luck would continue to dog the Heckendorns. After the death of their daughter, they brought up their grandson Raymond, just four when his mother died, but he was electrocuted while working in the Texas oilfields in 1972. He was 39.

The Whatleys built a new store a little way north to take advantage of traffic and ran it for ten years before selling to Clyde (seen here) and Mamie Dovie Robbins in 1959. Just as Harry Whateley had been before her, Dovie took over as Postmaster. For years they were the heart of Bard, even though Route 66 had been realigned, leaving the store isolated. But they made a living selling gas, groceries, notions, drugs, hardware and vetinerary supplies, and, when Clyde passed away in 1974, Dovie continued to run the place for a few more years with the help of her sons Carroll and Lester.

Empty since the 1980s, the Bard Store still had its shelving inside and it was possible to see what a decent-sized shop this had been. Until a few weeks ago when, like so many redundant and forgotten places, it was razed, leaving only memories.