Halfway House or Half-Way House (Anthony nickname)

The city of Anthony, Texas (and its other half of Anthony, New Mexico) is half the distance between El Paso, Texas and Las Cruces, New Mexico. Anthony has been called “Halfway House” (or “Half-Way House”) since at least 1996, although printed citations for this nickname are few.
 
Anthony’s other nicknames or slogans include “The Best Little Town in Two States” and “Leap Year Capital of the World.”
   
 
Wikipedia: Anthony, Texas
Anthony is a town in El Paso County, Texas, United States. The population was 3,850 at the 2000 census.
   
Wikipedia: Anthony, New Mexico
Anthony is a census-designated place (CDP) in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, USA. The population was 7,904 at the 2000 census. It is located south of Las Cruces on the New Mexico-Texas state line in the Upper Mesilla Valley along Interstate 10.
   
(Oxford English Dictionary)
half-way, halfway, adv., a., n., and prep.
Midway or equidistant between two points. half-way house, a house (often an inn) situated midway between two towns or stages of a journey, and therefore considered as a convenient halting-place. Also fig.
1694 W. BURNABY tr. Petronius’s Satyricon 21 We could not reach Lycurgus’s that Night, and therefore he brought us to a half-way House.
1793 in Corr. Ld. Auckland (1861) II. 515 Yours will be an excellent half-way house, almost as good as the inn at Bromley.
1839 ALISON Hist. Europe (1849-50) VII. xlii. §32. 115 The Cape of Good Hope had become a half-way house to their possessions in Bengal.
1901 S. E. WHITE Westerners xix. 164 Copper Creek had begun as a half-way house, and had ended as a camp.
1967 Canad. Ann. Rev. 1966 92 There was still need for such things as halfway group homes, preventive delinquency programs [etc.].
1970 ‘T. COE’ Wax Apple (1973) iii. 24 Halfway houses are places for people returning to society but unable or unwilling to make the plunge all at once. There are halfway houses for ex-drug addicts, former convicts.
           
Google Books
The Place Names of New Mexico
by Robert Hixson Julyan
Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press
1996
Pg. 18:
...known as Half Way House, because it’s approximately half-way between Las Cruces and El Paso.
   
Southern New Mexico Travel and Tourism
Anthony, New Mexico/Texas — leap year capital of the world
By Phyllis Eileen Banks
Last updated on Monday, December 30, 2002
(...)
On the eastern end of the Gadsden Purchase, the town of Anthony, that is divided by an invisible state line, has become known by locals as the “best little town in two states.” The early center of commerce developed around a flour mill located about 1/2 mile north of the state line and slightly east of where the railroad now runs. Farmers would visit and conduct business when they brought grain to the mill to be ground. The first post office was established in New Mexico in 1884, and still, in 1999, both sides of town are served by one post office in New Mexico. The post office, as well as other state and county offices, form the service center for small towns between Sunland Park and Mesilla.
 
Anthony, New Mexico was at one time called Halfway House because it is located half-way between Las Cruces, New Mexico and El Paso, Texas. Two stories of how the post office in 1884 became Anthony exist. One says a local lady built a chapel in her home and dedicated it to her patron saint, San Antonio. When a post office was requested under that name, another city in New Mexico had already claimed it, so the English form, Anthony, was chosen. The other story is that it was named by a Catholic priest who had established a church there. At one time it was a stop on the Butterfield Stage route.