Gothic Revival Campus and the Cursed Letter J
101 W College Blvd, Roswell, NM 88201
Research updated May 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Campus grounds viewable from exterior. Contact NMMI for visitor access procedures.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved campus grounds; some steps on historic buildings
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1891 · New Mexico Territorial History · Military Education · National Register Historic District
Colonel Robert S. Goss and Captain Joseph C. Lea founded what they called the Goss Military Institute in downtown Roswell in 1891 with 38 students. The New Mexico Territory's legislature recognized the school two years later and it was renamed the New Mexico Military Institute.
The school closed on what became known as Bad Friday — March 29, 1895 — due to financial difficulties, but reopened in fall 1898 after rancher James J. Hagerman donated 40 acres of land. The current campus is built in a uniform Gothic Revival style using buff brick, an architectural directive inspired by Virginia Military Institute and maintained with notable consistency across a century of construction.
NMMI received its first classification as a Distinguished Military Institution in 1909 and its first accreditation by the North Central Association in 1917. In 1977 it became fully coeducational. The campus was designated a historic district and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, with the Hagerman Barracks complex named for the land donor.
Notable alumni include journalist and ABC News anchor Sam Donaldson, hotelier Conrad Hilton, and actor Owen Wilson.
Sources
The institutional practice at NMMI of skipping the letter J in company designations is real and documented — the school does not use 'Juliet' in its company naming system. The explanation given in campus tradition is that the original Juliet Company was destroyed in a frontier engagement sometime in the school's early years, defending the institute from attack, and the designation was retired in their memory.
Historical documentation of this specific engagement, the casualty count, or the precise date has not been independently verified. The founding period of the school in the 1890s coincided with the final years of serious conflict in the New Mexico Territory, so the broad historical frame is plausible. The clock tower built to memorialize a lost company is also consistent with the campus's architectural record, though which tower commemorates this specific event is not specified in available sources.
The claim that faces of the dead appear in the tower's stonework on certain days, when sunlight strikes it at the right angle, follows a pattern of pareidolia-based accounts common at sites with memorial significance. The buff brick and stone of NMMI's Gothic Revival buildings contain the kind of textured, shadowed surfaces that produce this effect under the right lighting conditions.
Additional accounts describe cadets who drowned in the school's swimming pool and one who died by hanging in the bell tower. These accounts circulate among students and have been collected in paranormal databases but are not corroborated by institutional records in available sources.
Notable Entities
Walk the perimeter of the NMMI campus to view its uniform Gothic Revival architecture in buff brick — a style modeled on Virginia Military Institute. The clock tower built to memorialize a fallen company is visible from the street. The campus is a designated historic district on the National Register of Historic Places.
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