Las Vegas, New Mexico

Around 900 Buildings On The National Register Across Nine Historic Districts; A Santa Fe Trail Plaza Town That Became A Railroad Boomtown In 1879 And Then Stopped, Leaving One Of The Largest Intact Victorian Downtowns In The Southwest · Las Vegas, New Mexico

Las Vegas was a Santa Fe Trail plaza town from 1835, and when the railroad arrived in 1879 it laid its depot a mile east of the plaza, so the town simply built a second one - an entire brick and cast-iron Victorian commercial district, separate from the adobe original. For a few years it was one of the biggest towns in the territory and as rough as anywhere in the West. Then the boom moved on and very little was demolished. What is left is around nine hundred buildings on the National Register across nine districts, which is why film crews keep arriving: the plaza and Bridge Street have stood in for the nineteenth century in a long list of westerns. Theodore Roosevelt recruited Rough Riders in the Plaza Hotel bar. Up the canyon, Montezuma Castle is an 1886 railroad resort hotel, now owned by a college, with free hot springs in the canyon below it that students and locals use and no sign points to. The town is an hour from Santa Fe on the interstate and almost nobody stops, which is exactly why it is still intact.

1 Plaza Park, Las Vegas, Las Vegas, New Mexico, 87701, United States

The plaza, the streets and the historic districts are public and open at all hours, free. The shops around the plaza and on Bridge Street generally open late morning and close mid to late afternoon, with several closed on Sundays and Mondays. The Plaza Hotel is a working hotel with a bar and dining room. The City of Las Vegas Museum and the Rough Riders collection keep limited weekday hours. Montezuma Castle is toured on published days only.

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