When Tonopah's knife found the heart of Tocom, the young squaw rushed from her hiding place and used a knife to take Tonopah's life, as well as her own. Some credit this folktake to Geronimo. There's historical veracity to this explanation, since the mountain was known to be a Comanche lookout many years ago. The area in and around Tucumcari was very significant during the Triassic Period, also known as the dawn of the dinosaurs. Periods represented in the surrounding area of Quay County include all ages of the dinosaurs.
Footprints are very common in the area as well.
Go forward in history some 100 million years. Originally called Six Shooter Siding, Tucumcari owes its beginnings to a snowstorm and the railroad. In 1900, two men stayed with A.D. Goldenberg during a bad snowstorm, which lasted three weeks. In return for the hospitality they received, the two men indicated that a railroad would be going through the area soon, and would be establishing a stop four miles from the Goldenberg home. Goldenberg, his brother Max and two other businessmen, J.A. Street and Lee Kewen Smith, purchased property where they felt the railroad would have to lay its tracks.