New Mexicans saw quite a show along the railroad tracks in 1912. More than 10 percent of the state's people showed up. The train carried big signs and animals, but it wasn't a circus. It was the New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts' Agricultural Demonstration Train, brought to town by the fledgling Extension program.

Lecturers hired in 1911 specifically for Extension work rode the Demonstration Train. At each of its 71 stops in 16 days, men, women and children had the opportunity to learn more about progressive farming. The tour ushered in a new era, as New Mexico became the 47th state in the union. And it was time for progress.

Later, with the whistle-stop tour fresh in his mind, William Conway,  Extension superintendent, wrote with conviction in support of the federal Smith-Lever Agricultural Extension Bill: Does New Mexico need this kind of work? There is no state that needs it more.

Setting the stage

The late 1800s had been a time of growth and expansion for New Mexico, said Kathy Treat, retired assistant Extension director at NMSU and Extension history researcher.

The Homestead Act, the arrival of the railroad, and the military presence in the territory all had a significant role in bringing people to New Mexico. However, the settlers had to adapt to an environment unlike that of the Midwest, South or East. Land was abundant, but water was limited. And agricultural practices in Kansas or Missouri did not apply to New Mexico. There was a great need for education to help the settlers adapt.

It was both a faith in science and a missionary zeal to reach the masses that characterized the reform era, which set the stage for the Extension century.

Social reformers were having a profound impact in Europe and America. State-supported agricultural colleges began to appear in America in the 1850s, and many scientists looked to Germany's experiment station farms equipped with laboratories as models for learning about agricultural chemistry.

In 1862, the Morrill Act created the land-grant college system in America to focus on the needs of the industrial classes, farmers foremost among them.

The 1887 Hatch Act made it possible, through matching federal funding, to replicate farm laboratories across America in the Morrill Act-sponsored colleges. The Hatch Act, in fact, prompted the founding of the original New Mexico Agricultural College near Las Cruces.

About the same time, a whole new movement began. In 1884, Oxford University students moved into London tenements to help residents improve their lives. The movement spread to America, where it was led by activist women who sought to improve conditions in a society in which one in six babies died before the age of 1 and childbirth was the second-leading cause of death among women.

In 1914, the new Federal Children's Bureau started a campaign to educate women about prenatal health and child care. That same year, the Smith-Lever Act created the Cooperative Extension Service to take education from land-grant universities to rural communities, increasing agricultural production and improving the quality of life.

Next, a system of federal and state funding was created to disseminate practical education in agriculture and home economics. The state of New Mexico authorized Extension in 1915, and two years later the county agent law designated a match of $1 of state funds for each $1 of county funds to promote the production of food and further extend Extension's reach. By 1919, 27 of 28 counties offered Extension programs, Treat said.

Extension's first chapter

During the first year of operation under the Smith-Lever Act, New Mexico organized 71 boys' and girls' clubs and garnered attendance at 685 meetings equivalent to 10 percent of the population. However, use of the public meeting fell victim to a 1918 influenza epidemic that killed two agents, Treat said.

One of Extension director A.C. Cooley's first appointments was Dora Ross as the Extension home economics director.

We need homebuilders, not speculators, Cooley said. He found farmers disgruntled that they had been enticed to New Mexico but had found little support to help them succeed. He said the highest goal Extension could set was to convert the people to believe in New Mexico, betraying an evangelical streak pervading the times.

Extension in tough times: In the 1930s, Fabiola C. de Baca Gilbert, top, was the heart of Extension home economics. Later, she became a well-known author. A truck full of 4H'ers heads to Las Cruces for State 4-H Club Encampment, circa 1930. 4-H enrollment grew rapidly until 1923, when staffing limits arrested growth.

The booming 1920s passed by rural America. At a time when autos, electricity, phones, and appliances were becoming a normal part of urban life, rural America was not yet partaking and, in fact, took a downturn following World War I. Farm prices dropped, and families faced difficult times.

In 1921, the monthly Extension News began publication, using reports from the counties to offer inspiration to the field staff. The lack of commitment to the state continued to be a problem. What we need are more people who are expecting to make this country their permanent home, an Extension News article said, instead of putting a temporary shack on the place with the expectation that it will do until they can sell the place and move on.

From the beginning, administrators admonished agents through the Extension News to demonstrate work and create leaders and not be drawn into being the county's hired hand.

Does Extension Work Pay? a headline in the third edition asked. The article gave examples of how it did by improving herds through boys' club work and making loan money available to farmers. Hold on there, neighbor, the article read. We have been trying in our community for years to get some of that federal farm loan money. Finally, when we sent our agent to the Land Bank at Wichita to explain our needs, we got action.

Vouching for the quality of local producers' operations became a main part of an agent's job. Citing special loan funds available in three counties, the Extension News stated, In each case, the county agent has been asked to specify the men deserving of such aid or called in for consultation.

The agents arranged and demonstrated how to innoculate animals and improve seedstock and conducted farm account schools. Consequently, they knew who was doing a good job on the farm.

Extension work is growing in popularity, the Extension News said in 1923. Businessmen everywhere are endorsing it.

But emergency appropriations that funded expansion of Extension staffs during World War I were phased out and staffs had to be trimmed. In 1923, policy dictated that each county have only two professionals, a male county agent to work with the men and boys, and a female home demonstration agent to work with the women and girls. 4-H activities and events continued, although the organization did not grow in membership the way it had in the first decade.

Nonetheless, the county Extension office continued to be central to agricultural commerce, even when it involved transactions with the government under New Deal laws that attempted to stabilize agriculture during the droughts and depression of the 1930s.

In 1934, at the dawn of the New Deal, W.G. (Bill) Vinzant started his Extension career in the midst of the dust bowl in Harding County. The federal government was buying cattle for which there were few other markets. A trio made up of a veterinarian, brand inspector and appraiser worked through Vinzant's office to buy cattle to be shipped out via the railroad or shot on the spot, if condition warranted.

We had a bunch of cows below the mesa and to get up to the railroad they had to walk up this grade and a lot of them couldn't make it, Vinzant remembered.

Green revolutionaries: W.G. (Bill) Vinzant, right, Roosevelt County agent, promotes fertilizer demonstrations on the Ben McAlister farm, characteristic of the green revolution era in 1954. Floyd McAlister, current Roosevelt County Extension program director, is the son of Ben, left. (The peanuts referred to in the sign are located to the right of Vinzant.)

The farm program was just getting started then. We'd get letters from Washington saying do this and do that, and we'd call a meeting to explain details and discuss the programs.

I worked with the REA (Rural Electric Administration) for about a year, Vinzant said. We had to get so many memberships paid up before the government would come in with that rural electric. It was the difference between the kerosene lamp and electric lights.

Horse power on the farm also was passing from horses to tractors.

Nobody had a car in my community, said Mary Baca Olguin, who grew up in Cañon near Taos and later became a home demonstration agent.

We had a very wonderful county agent, Angel Sandoval, she said. They used to call him the agent of the women, because during the poverty of the Depression he started canning clubs, and women would get together and plant their gardens in the summer and can.

It was fun. The women liked it and socialized. It was beautiful.

Fabiola C. de Baca Gilbert was the most famous home economics teacher in Extension in the 1930s and 1940s.

Palemon Martinez, who became an agent and district Extension director, remembers her from when he was growing up in Arroyo Seco.

My grandmother had a big house with a big kitchen and a long table, and lots of women, primarily family members, working around it and involved in some group activity that entailed preparing corn for canning. My hunch is that Fabiola may have been behind that and the total family involvement. My older sisters and others still recall her work. To me, Fabiola was a legend on family life and home economics.

In a 1939 editorial in the  Extension News, home demonstration agents considered the direction their programs should take, foreshadowing contemporary attitudes.

The future program toward which we should work is one which does not separate women's interests from men's interests but rather one which considers farm family living as a whole both in planning and execution.

By the time World War II arrived, the status of the county agent in rural communities was almost lofty. To my dad, first was Jesus, and next was the county agent, said Dorman Brookey, who retired as a state 4-H specialist. I'd dream that I wanted to be a county agent and wear khakis. The county agents in the early 1940s . . . they wore khaki pants and a khaki shirt. But the main thing . . . they had a car.

Extension historian: Kathy Treat, retired Extension assistant director, has recorded hours of conversations with retired Extension professionals and reviewed historical documents to preserve a historical record of the Cooperative Extension Service in New Mexico.

Extension in boom times

Adjustment to changing agricultural conditions in the nation and the world was the theme for the 1947 Cooperative Extension Annual Conference. Agriculture Dean Harry Varney told the agents that education is still the first aim of the Extension service.

Varney echoed the Green Revolution era of progress, emphasizing that farmers and ranchers must be kept up-to-date on improved practices and given help with developing long-term plans for improving their farms and ranches, homes and communities. It was a theme that dominated Extension's second era.

Extension had just emerged from another round of conservation and sacrifice during World War II. As county agents were drafted or enlisted, the ranks of experienced agents were seriously depleted.

By 1942, victory gardens were encouraged, and essentials, such as gas, sugar and meat, were rationed. Fewer meetings were held, more radio programs broadcast and, where possible, local leaders were used to take information to communities. Home economists looked for meat- and sugar-saving recipes and demonstrated substituting honey and syrup for sugar.

In 1943, the U.S. Department of Agriculture designated Extension as the agency responsible for recruiting and placing scarce farm and ranch labor. The agency recruited nonfarm youth and women for farm labor, and assisted farmers in training and using new workers, Treat said. By September 1943, plans were in place for using prisoner-of-war labor in certain counties.

In the 1950s, New Mexico's Extension program began to adjust to changing national and international trends, Treat said.

In the early 1950s, on the advice of a group of farmers and ranchers, New Mexico A & M requested and received funding to set up a Department of Agricultural Services. Working closely with both the Extension service and the Agricultural Experiment Station, they recruited volunteers to participate in on-farm demonstration research.

The first program year report recorded about 180 fertilizer and variety demonstrations. The cooperators kept records of results, and the department analyzed information and determined the rate of return. Did this do-it-yourself research pay? Treat asked. Cooperators thought so.

The bull testing station at Tucumcari was built in 1961, during this Agricultural Services era; the first bull sale was held in 1962. Cooperators provided the bulls for gathering data on the rate of weight gain and feed efficiency. Its most important result was its educational value for the producer, Treat said.

In the early 1960s, Extension kept farmers informed about rapid developments in mechanization, labor-saving devices and improved farm buildings and structures.

In 1962, NMSU Extension agents were hosts to 2,000 county agents and family members from across the nation. The first meeting was in Las Cruces, with trips to Elephant Butte, White Sands, Stahmann Farms and a cattle ranch included in the package. (New Mexico agents will play hosts once more this summer in Albuquerque; they expect 2,400 this time.)

A couple of years later, Extension would begin to feel the effects of the social action of the 1960s. Beginning with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the role of the federal partner became a much more important part of programming and employment throughout the Extension system.

From green revolution to social revolution

Ground breaker: Angel Gómez's Extension career epitomized the social revolution era that gathered steam in the 1970s.

Angel Gómez got his first job as an assistant county agent in 1962, and his career rapidly came to typify the next era of Extension characterized by an effort to reach out to low-income audiences. Whether it was dodging the bombs and bullets of revolutionary fire fights when on assignment in Nicaragua or being a change agent in New Mexico, Gomez felt the revolutionary fervor of the times.

I was always in positions that were new and were breaking ground, and I liked that, Gómez said. I was the first (agent) in New Mexico in a community development position. I was the first person assigned to work specifically with low-income clientele.

Gómez worked the north-central counties for 4-H and later became the organization's Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action officer.

Emotions ran high among public land users during the emerging environmental awareness era. The Range Improvement Task Force was formed in 1979, under the leadership of Jerry Schickedanz, who later became Extension director and then dean of NMSU's College of Agriculture and Home Economics.

The task force studied issues of dispute relating to public lands use and the impact on the environment, often using the data to mediate the disputes. The program became a model in the region.

In the 1970s, Gómez and others in the state 4-H office reached a broader group of people, as traditional club programs were augmented by school enrichment programs. Pilot community resource development programs focused on working in small communities and developing methods of working with low-income families. The Small Farm Task Force began its efforts to increase income from small farms in northern New Mexico.

The largest broadening effort was the federally funded Expanded Food and Nutrition Program (EFNEP) in 1969. Eighteen New Mexico counties, the Navajo Reservation and the Northern and Southern Pueblos took part in the program. About 120 Extension nutrition aides were trained and employed to carry information about good nutrition to their friends, neighbors and communities.

This was the first organized effort to reach out to limited-income families and youth, Treat said. Not only was the program educational in nature, but it also raised aspirations of both families and aides.

The program continued under flat federal funding for almost three decades, dwindling until it served only four counties. In the 1990s, the program was renewed with some state funding and the federal Food Stamp Initiative, which paid for nutrition aides in more counties than ever by the end of the 1990s.

This was also a time when cooperation with other groups and organizations began to build towards efforts today that reflect a new philosophy of Extension, Treat said.

Extension is much more involved in partnerships and facilitating programs than it was 20 years ago, said Billy Dictson, associate dean and Extension director. We are asked a lot more often to enter partnerships with businesses, agencies and groups.

Spanning the generations: Extension director Billy Dictson is the son-in-law of W.G. (Bill) Vinzant, whose Extension career began in 1934. His own Extension career began in 1965. Dictson is proud that New Mexico has become heavily involved in nontraditional programs, while maintaining good relations with and service to agricultural and other traditional clientele.

One result of working this way has been the ability to develop new areas of programming. We have been able to conduct nontraditional programs without alienating our traditional clientele, Dictson said.

I have been quite surprised at how adaptable our faculty have been over the past several years. They have adapted to new programs, new audiences and new technology.

Dictson added that the impact of technology has been to raise expectations. Expected productivity has increased tremendously. Extension life is moving at a more rapid pace than 30 years ago. With cell phones, e-mail and faxes, agents can make more contacts in a few hours than they could make in several days before. They can make calls on the way to a meeting, and they can get called with more work while they are at the meeting. We used to send letters and expect a response in a couple of weeks, and now we e-mail people and expect answers in a couple of hours.

Dictson, who was recruited into Extension by Vinzant, says the journal of an agent in the 1920s or 1930s would still read largely like that of an agent today.

We're working on issues relating to family, youth, agriculture, and community development, but they are different agricultural issues and different family issues, and the issues are more complicated than ever before, Dictson said.

The need for Extension is greater today than it ever has been in history.