Thousands of Historic Carmon Phillips Photographs Now Available Through Wingfield Heritage House Museum Online Collections
June 24, 2026 (Ruidoso, NM) — The Ruidoso Wingfield Heritage House Museum has made more than 2,700 historic photographs from the Carmon Phillips Collection available through its online collections database, providing residents, researchers, historians, and visitors with a remarkable visual record of Ruidoso’s past.
The collection captures daily life in Ruidoso during the community’s formative years, particularly throughout the 1950s and 1960s, documenting local businesses, community events, landscapes, ranching life, tourism, and the people who helped shape the village.
Carmon and Leona Mae Phillips moved to Ruidoso in 1946 and purchased the historic Dowlin Mill, which they restored and operated as both a store and cultural attraction. In addition to his work in the community, Carmon Phillips became one of the area’s most prolific photographers.
His images appeared in promotional materials, newspapers, and publications that helped document and promote the growing mountain village. He published the magazine Pictorial Ruidoso and contributed photographs to the Ruidoso News and other regional publications, creating an invaluable visual archive of life in Lincoln County during a period of significant growth and change.
In 2011, the Phillips family’s daughter, Delana Phillips Clements, donated more than 6,000 of her father’s photographic negatives to the Hubbard Museum of the American West in Ruidoso Downs.
When the Hubbard Museum temporarily closed in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, approximately half of the collection had been digitized. Since then, the Wingfield Heritage House Museum has continued the preservation effort, scanning and cataloging the remaining negatives to ensure the collection remains accessible for future generations.
More than 2,700 images are now searchable through the museum’s online collections database, with additional photographs being added as cataloging work continues.
Museum staff and volunteers are also reviewing the photographs to identify the people, places, businesses, and events featured in the images. As new information is confirmed, records within the database will be updated to provide additional historical context and improve searchability.
The project represents an ongoing effort to preserve and share Ruidoso’s history while making important local resources accessible to the public.
Explore the Carmon Phillips Collection and search the museum’s online collections database at:
https://wingfieldheritagehouse.catalogaccess.com/
New images and updated information will continue to be added as the preservation and cataloging process moves forward.
About Wingfield Heritage House Museum
The Wingfield House Heritage Museum (WHHM) preserves and shares the stories of Ruidoso’s past. Housed in one of the community’s oldest landmarks, the museum offers exhibits and programs that highlight the region’s cultural and frontier history.
Website: https://www.ruidoso-nm.gov/wingfield-heritage-house-museum
