Laura Harper

President

Laura Harper was delivered in Farmington by Dr. Robert Hume. With a 4-beat skip – hands slapping her sides - loves San Juan County: its bluffs, its rivers, its cottonwoods, its Spanish Mustangs, the smell of its dirt when it rains and it’s history.

Laura’s pioneer roots began with her Great Grandparents, Elmer Franklin Taylor and his wife Mary Jane Steele, and Joseph Lehi Foutz and his wife Emma Elizabeth Crossland who settled the area in the 1880’s.  Her parents, Milton Herman Walters, who arrived to join in the county’s oil field boom of the late 1940’s and his wife Mary Jo Taylor, the county’s first woman Real Estate Broker, made their mark in San Juan County history.

“My claim to fame includes having a letter of recommendation written by the county’s first woman education Superintendent, Grace Barker Wilson, riding a Nevada mustang in the Durango Cowboy Gathering parade and producing documentary films about the local Spanish Colonial Mustangs and early settlers. I believe that documenting history through visual story telling provides a great way to reveal San Juan County’s historical provenance in a unifying and thorough way." Laura Harper holds a MA in Administrative Organization-NMSU.