Elsie Chavez Chilton was a resident of Las Cruces, New Mexico, in the 1930s and 1940s. She grew up in an area of the city called Chiva Town, also known as Goat Hill. That region, now part of Las Cruces’ Mesquite Historic District, had long been noted for its goat herders. Local farmers, many of them Hispanic, raised goats in the high ground surrounding the Las Cruces Arroyo. Goatherds harvested milk from the goats, made cheese from it, and sold the cheese around the city’s neighborhoods.