Billy the Kid became the face of Lincoln County, but the violence that made him famous was never really about him. The Lincoln County War of 1878-1881 was a brutal economic contest between two factions fighting for control of government beef contracts, dry goods monopolies, and ranch land across a territory larger than some Eastern states. On one side stood Lawrence Murphy and James Dolan, Irish immigrants who had built a mercantile empire from their store known simply as 'The House.' On the other were English rancher John Tunstall and his partner Alexander McSween, newcomers who challenged the monopoly by opening their own store and bank. The murder of Tunstall in February 1878 lit the fuse. Billy the Kid, a young ranch hand loyal to Tunstall, joined a posse called the Regulators that pursued the killers. Tit-for-tat ambushes escalated into the Five-Day Battle of Lincoln in July 1878, when McSween's house was set ablaze and he was shot dead fleeing the flames. The violence echoed all the way to Washington, prompting President Rutherford B. Hayes to replace the territorial governor.

When the shooting stopped and the cattle drives moved elsewhere, Lincoln simply stopped changing. The population dwindled, businesses closed, and the buildings remained because no one had reason to tear them down. In 1960, the entire community was designated a National Historic Landmark, and a 1974 National Park Service reviewer called it the best-preserved frontier cow town in the United States. Today, the historic district contains 48 structures stretched along U.S. Route 380 between Capitan and Roswell. Four museum buildings operate year-round: the Old Lincoln County Courthouse where Billy made his escape, the Tunstall Store with its original nineteenth-century merchandise still on the shelves, the Torreon defensive tower where settlers once sheltered from Apache raids, and the Montano Store featuring exhibits on adobe construction and Hispanic frontier life. The San Juan Mission Church, built in 1887, still holds services. Walking Lincoln's single street is as close as America gets to time travel in the Old West.

Of all the gunfights, ambushes, and betrayals in Lincoln County, one moment defined the town forever. Billy the Kid had been captured, tried, and sentenced to hang for the murder of Sheriff William Brady during the Lincoln County War. He was held on the second floor of the courthouse, guarded by deputies James Bell and Robert Olinger. On April 28, 1881, while Olinger was across the street eating dinner, Billy overpowered Bell on the staircase and shot him with his own pistol. He then grabbed Olinger's shotgun from the gun rack, waited at the upstairs window, and when Olinger came running at the sound of gunfire, Billy called his name. Olinger looked up just in time to receive both barrels. Billy spent nearly an hour after the killings trying to free himself from his leg irons, borrowed a pickaxe from a local man, mounted a horse, and rode east toward Fort Sumner. The whole town watched him go. No one tried to stop him.

From above, Lincoln is a slender thread of settlement in a wide green valley. The town runs east-west along a single road, surrounded by ranch land and the broken terrain of the Capitan Mountains to the north and the Sacramentos to the south. The buildings cluster tightly along the main street, their flat roofs and adobe walls distinct against the summer grass or winter brown of the valley floor. The Torreon tower, originally built as a refuge from Apache attacks in the 1860s, stands near the center of town. To the west lies Capitan, home of Smokey Bear, about 12 miles distant. Roswell is roughly 35 miles to the east. There is no commercial airport in Lincoln, the nearest being Sierra Blanca Regional Airport in Ruidoso, about 45 miles south. The landscape tells the story of why Lincoln mattered: wide-open range country where cattle meant money, and money meant war.