Top 10 True Western Towns of 2014

8 • Lincoln, New Mexico When Spanish pioneers settled in the fertile valley of the Rio Bonito in 1849, they named their community La Placita. But around 1869, the name was changed to Lincoln. Less than a decade later, the town became the center of the Lincoln County War, a bloody conflict over the economic and political control of Lincoln County, at the time the largest county in the United States. It all started—at least the shooting part of it—when partisans shot John Tunstall, a wealth