When the Santa Fe railroad was building its transcontinental railway through Curry county around 1906; it tasked its engineers with finding the first level section of land west of Texico for a town-site in the newly developing ranch and farm area of Eastern New Mexico and to locate their terminal and shops on the Belen cut-off. The engineers selected the site of the original Clovis, Northwest of an existing rail switch, known as Riley Switch. By 1907 the railroad was running its first transcontinental traffic through Clovis. The Clovis Depot Model Train museum was the original depot built for the railroad around 1907. The museum displays not only railroad memorabilia and historical exhibits of the development of the railroad in the American Southwest but in Australia and Great Britain as well.