2019-12-11 08:00:00
“The Other Las Vegas”—that’s what residents of Las Vegas, New Mexico call their hometown, now that the bigger and fancier Las Vegas, Nevada, has stolen the spotlight.
But what New Mexico’s Las Vegas lacks in name recognition, it more than makes up for in historical significance. For every megacasino in the Nevada gambling center, there is a historic building in its namesake in New Mexico that recalls the heyday on the Santa Fe Trail, or the American seizure of the territory of Mexico in the 1840s, or the arrival of the railway with its eastern influences. The result is the town’s surprisingly robust inventory of 918 buildings on the National Register of Historic Places, earning Las Vegas, NM, a spot on the National Register’s list of “Distinctive Destinations.”
What’s more, the small town at the foot of New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains is the original Las Vegas, founded long before the Nevada upstart dealt his first poker hand. And just like “meadow” (vegas) dictated both official names, the nickname “Sin City” applied equally to the New Mexico settlement in its heyday, with brawls, shootouts, cattle rustling, and lynchings instigated by desperados like Billy the Kid and Jesse James. Still, the Wild West outpost thrived from its location along the Santa Fe Trail and later the railroad: By the end of the 19th century, it was the largest city in New Mexico and a microcosm of Southwestern history.
In retrospect, even though the town’s founding was still a few years off, 1821 was a prosperous year for Las Vegas. For one thing, it was the first request for a grant in the lush grasslands known as Vegas Grandes, an area that had long been a crossroads between the nomadic Plains Indians and the Pueblo peoples of the Rio Grande Valley. Luís María Cabeza de Baca and his family tried to establish a farm Las Vegasbut Indian raids drove the settlers back.
Just south of the future site of Las Vegas, on November 13, 1821, Missouri trader William Becknell and his trading party encountered a force of 400 Mexican soldiers and Pueblo Indians led by Captain Pedro Ignacio Gallego. Laconically, Captain Gallego later reported: “About 3:30 p.m. I encountered six Americans at the Puertocito de la Piedra Lumbre…. Not understanding their words and any of the signs they made, I decided to return to [San Miguel del] Vado… Nothing further happened.”
With Gallego’s tacit permission, Becknell went to Santa Fe and unloaded his goods, beginning a period of robust trade between New Mexico and the American frontier towns to the east. By the 1830s, caravans of wagons delivered cloth, tools, and other manufactured goods to Santa Fe, and sometimes beyond to Chihuahua, returning with gold dust or silver pesos, and mules bred on the ranchos of New Mexico.
In 1835, 29 individuals from San Miguel del Vado obtained the Las Vegas land grant from the Mexican government. Their new settlement would be 65 miles east of Santa Fe, on the banks of the Gallinas River. Plans called for residences, a plaza, fields irrigated by a irrigation ditch (irrigation ditch) and common lands for grazing sheep. As a way station on the Santa Fe Trail, the plaza was designed to hold livestock—and even a wagon train—in case of Indian attack. The settlers named their town Nuestra Señora de los Dolores de las Vegas Grandes (Our Lady of Sorrows of the Great Meadows).
In a later memoir, local merchant William Kronig recalled Las Vegas as “an adobe-built town consisting of regarding 100 shacks or cabins placed at random. A few were built along the main road and around a square .”
Church bells rang to announce the approach of merchant caravans, and residents gathered in the square with carts full of food and other goods for the merchants. In the evening, the visitors together with the townspeople enjoyed the high-spirited music and dance of a fandango.
For weary travelers arriving from the east, the rough Mexican town offered a welcome sign of civilization, the first real town since their departure from Missouri or Kansas. Susan Shelby Magoffin, the 19-year-old bride of a Santa Fe merchant, described her first sight of the settlement: “We drove down a long hill at the foot of which ran a beautiful clear stream…. It almost entirely encircling the village of Vegas, crossing it we immediately came in contact with the dwelling-houses, pig-pens, corn cribs, &c.
On August 18, 1846, a different kind of traveler recorded his impressions. Private Philip Gooch Ferguson, US Army, wrote: “Tonight camping on the hill east of Las Vegas. Here our curiosity was satisfied with a sight of a Mexican town. The United States declared war on Mexico, and Ferguson’s division sent Brig. Gen. Stephen Watts Kearny and his Army of the West into Mexican territory. Las Vegas became their first major encounter with a community of Mexican citizens on Mexican soil. The townspeople gathered in the square to hear a speech from Kearny, which was backed by the presence of several large cannons.
With the city’s mayor (mayor) at his side, Kearny announced to the residents that they were no longer citizens of Mexico but under the “protection” of the US military. “We come among you as friends, not as enemies,” he told them, “but he who takes up arms once morest me I will hang!” With that ruling, the “Mexican town” took on a new identity—that of an American frontier town during New Mexico’s long and tumultuous territorial era.
The presence of the army in New Mexico provided protection once morest Indian raids and thus encouraged traffic on the Santa Fe Trail. By 1851, the army had moved to the new Fort Union (now Fort Union National Monument), 18 miles north of Las Vegas. With local farmers and merchants providing supplies for the troops, the fort contributed to the growth of Las Vegas.
In the spring of 1862, Confederate troops from Texas invaded Santa Fe, then capital of the New Mexico Territory, en route to Colorado and California. The territorial governor moved his office to Las Vegas and briefly turned it into the territorial capital. But as soon as the Southern troops withdrew, the territorial governor returned to Santa Fe.
A particularly memorable Fourth of July took place in 1879: For the first time, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad steamed into town. Actually, the tracks missed Las Vegas by a mile, giving rise to a new town across the river. Now there were two communities called Las Vegas—old and new, west and east, Mexican and Anglo—creating a schism that would last for nearly a century.
Unlike the roads winding around the plaza on the older west side, a neat grid of streets laid out in straight lines distinguished the newer East Las Vegas. The newcomers built grand Victorian buildings that contrasted with the earlier, earthy adobes. Anglos crossed the bridge to build on both sides of the river, so that the elegant three-story Plaza Hotel, dating from 1882, still borders rough-hewn adobes facing the Old Town Plaza.
Along with a renewed upsurge in prosperity, the coming of the railroad brought a period of lawlessness that served as fodder for many a Wild West tale. Saloons and dance halls proliferated, catering to gunslingers, gamblers and shady operators of every kind. This was the period when Wyatt Earp’s friend Doc Holliday ran a saloon (until he left town just before a lynching party) and Billy the Kid escaped from the Las Vegas jail.
In one month in 1880, 29 men met a violent death—some were hanged from the windmill that stood in the center of the square. Outraged citizens recruited so-called “peace officers” known as the Dodge City Gang, but muggings and train robberies continued, with the perpetrators often protected by corrupt lawmen.
Meanwhile, Anglo ranchers, increasing their herds exponentially, began encroaching on Las Vegas’ common lands. From 1889 to 1892, night-riding residents “White Caps” (White Hats) protested the encroachment into their pastures by cutting fences and burning sheds. The cattle wars provided cover for local saloon owner Vicente Silva and his Society of Bandits to engage in large-scale cattle rustling.
By the end of the century, the trains brought wealthy vacationers to the Southwest, and luxury hotels sprang up to accommodate them. One of the most stylish was the Mission Revival-style La Castañeda, built in 1898 as one of Fred Harvey’s railroad hotels. Although no longer open to guests today, it still overlooks the railroad tracks in faded grandeur.
As the railroad spread, trade on the Santa Fe Trail declined. Additionally, other railroad cities, such as Albuquerque in the Southwest, claimed their share of railroad-generated profits, so Las Vegas gradually fell into obscurity.
Built by the Works Progress Administration during the Depression, an unassuming stone building contains details of Las Vegas’ turbulent past. Interestingly, the City of Las Vegas Museum/Rough Rider Memorial Collection also documents the town’s link to the Cuban campaign of the Spanish-American War. Theodore Roosevelt, then Secretary of the Navy, was looking for experienced horsemen for his 1st US Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, and New Mexico cowboys filled the bill admirably. Even though horses and cavalry were somehow separated before the famous charge up San Juan Hill, the cavalrymen on foot stormed the hill and returned victorious. In 1899, the first Rough Riders reunion was held in Las Vegas, with several subsequent reunions taking place there until 1968, when only two veterans of the old unit were still alive. One of those died later that year and the reunions stopped.
In the 20th century, as Las Vegas slipped into a long economic decline, the 19th-century buildings remained standing. “We mightn’t afford to tear them down,” explains current mayor Henry Sánchez. This suited Hollywood producers well. Tom Mix checked into the Plaza Hotel, and hundreds of faux cowboys descended on the frontier-era storefronts. Jack Nicholson (in the movie Easy rider) spent the night in the jail cell occupying the back of Tito’s Gallery in Bridge Street.
Finally, in 1970, the police, fire and other government departments of East and West Las Vegas came together to form one city, but, says Mayor Sánchez with a laugh, “We still have two school districts!” Las Vegas counts nine historic districts spread across this community of 16,500 people.
On July 4, Independence Day vies with the anniversary of the arrival of the railroad as a defining moment in the city’s history. The multi-day “Fourth of July Fiestas” kick off with a Fiesta Mass at Our Lady of Sorrows Church. Food vendors line Bridge Street leading to the square, while patriotic parades and entertainment share the spotlight with nation dances and the Queen’s ball (Queen’s Ball). In August, locals show off their historic buildings during an annual “Places with a Past” tour of historic sites.
When it comes to authentic home traditions, there’s only one Las Vegas.
Originally published in the June 2006 issue of American history. To subscribe, click here.
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