President Woodrow Wilson wished to isolate the United States from foreign entanglements, but business interests in Latin America focused the government’s attention on a bloody revolution in Mexico. When a Mexican bandit leader named Pancho Villa killed seventeen Americans on a train in Northern Mexico and raided a tiny town in New Mexico, Wilson sent American troops under General John J. Pershing to hunt Villa down. Ninety-three men from Company L of the Massachusetts State Guard served under Pershing. This armory in Greenfield, Massachusetts, was the headquarters for Company L. The armory was built in 1909 at a cost of $50,000.