Clovis is a town of about 32,000 near the Texas border, surrounded by cattle ranches and open plains. It is not a prime tourist destination, but it works as a stopover between New Mexico's northern mountains and its southern deserts. Clovis is also home to Cannon Air Force Base, and the town that gave the Clovis archaeological culture its name — some of the earliest evidence of human habitation in North America was found at Blackwater Draw, twenty miles to the south.
The downtown has a tight cluster of New Deal–era buildings worth a slow walk: the Art Deco Curry County Courthouse, the restored State Theater, the towering Hotel Clovis, and the old 1920 Lyceum Theater. The town's most consequential building, however, is Norman Petty Recording Studios, the small concrete-block recording shed where Buddy Holly cut "That'll Be the Day" and most of his catalogue. A green-chile cheeseburger at the 1952 drive-in Foxy closes the day.