While Carrizozo is experiencing resurgence, based in part on the popularity of its historical buildings, there is one structure that is being keenly watched as it is being restored.

Roy’s Gift Gallery, formerly Paden’s Drug Store, is on the National Register of Historic Places and remains a reminder of past events, as well as an example of a distinctive type of building.

Marty Davenport nominated the building in 2004 and it was accepted in Feb. 2005. Davenport was able to draw on information given by Roy Dow who owned the Gift Gallery and several other old-timers who remembered stories of when the building was a hospital.

Originally built in 1909, the two-story brick building served as the locus for Dr. Melvin G. Paden’s medical practice. Paden moved to White Oaks from West Virginia in the 1880s. In 1906 he was appointed division surgeon for the railroad, necessitating his move to Carrizozo. He first built the small one-story wood frame building but, as his practice grew, he found it necessary to expand to include a drug store and more modern hospital facility next door. In 1917 a second story was added with rooms branching off a central hallway and a laboratory and operating room on the west side. Offices are located on the east side. A kitchen and bathroom were also added. The door leading to the operating room is over-sized to allow patients on gurneys access. Large windows on the north and west sides were designed to let natural light in to the operating room, and push-button electric switches and drop cord pendant lights were standard in each room.

The building itself is made of pressed and Ancho clay tile brick. The window lintels on the second floor are made of cast concrete. A coal chute leads to the basement, the location of the boiler, vented by the exterior brick chimney.

Paden retired from the railroad in 1927, but there is credible information that he continued to practice until 1933. He also dispensed medicine. While Carrizozo was never a large town and there were other doctors, railroad and ranch accidents and the occasional bar fight and gunshot wound kept Paden and his medical brethren busy.

In 1937, Paden sold the pharmacy to “Red” Eaker who retained the Paden name and ran the business until 1954.

The combination of drug store/soda fountain was a fairly common occurrence, primarily due to the belief that soda water had medicinal benefits. Paden installed the soda fountain prior to 1914. He incorporated dry ice technology of the time to drinks. Eaker replaced the fountain with one built by the Liquid Carbonic Corporation. He also replaced the original counter of Italian marble with domestic marble.

The downstairs boasts the original carved cherry wood back bar and full mirror with stained glass inserts. Along the walls were cherry wood display cases. Porcelain drawer knobs were labeled “…for contents such as sassafras, canary seed, hemp seed, camphora, sacharum and insect powder” on a separate case. Many of the cases and the back bar were moved from White Oaks and date back to the 1890s. The wood floors were covered with linoleum in the 1950s and acoustical tile now cover the plaster ceiling.

The upgrades reflect the shift of drug stores as businesses to places of social interaction. Hollywood produced numerous wholesome Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland Andy Hardy movies that took place at soda counters and, in real life, rumors of movie stars being “found” at places like Schwab’s Pharmacy motivated countless young men and women to move to the West Coast for a chance at fame and fortune.  Back home, working as a soda jerk became a viable summer job for hundreds of young people.

According to Shannon Jackson Arnold in “Everybody Loves Ice Cream: The Whole Scoop on America’s Favorite Treat,” there were over 120,000 soda fountains in 1946. By the 1950s, however, national chain drug stores forced smaller, family-run stores out of business.

Back in Carrizozo, lifelong resident Roy Dow who had a gift shop, moved his business into the Paden Drug Store in 1977. Dow kept the fixtures and feel of an old-time soda fountain, making ice cream sodas by hand and interacting with locals and visitors until he died in 2013.

In 2015, Roy’s Gift Gallery and Olde-Time Ice Cream Parlor, formerly Paden’s Drug Store, was the site for a study by Paranormal Research Investigations from El Paso. Their findings of unusual lights and unexplained noises attributed to the ghosts of those who occupied the bed upstairs when the gift shop was a hospital can be seen on their Facebook page.

The restoration will no doubt give a boost and purpose to the town in its bringing the past to the present and honoring those who called Carrizozo home.