Interstate 25 north, Exit 343: Las Vegas, NM (elevation 6,715). Las Vegas, “City of the Meadows” became a boomtown with the arrival of The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe (AT&SF) Railroad in 1879. The railroad district attracted notorious characters and was considered as wild as Tombstone or Dodge City. Also in 1879 “Doc” Holliday arrived and bought a saloon. After fatally shooting a man, he returned to Kansas the following year. Fred Harvey, a pioneer in creating chains of railroad eating houses and hotels across the US, built La Castaneda Hotel here in 1898. The Harvey Girls staffed the hotel’s dining room lived across the street in the Rawlings Building. And yes, I have seen the movie The Harvey Girls (1946) starring Judy Garland and Angela Lansbury. The Hotel also became the site of the first Rough Rider Reunion in 1899. The then Governor of New York, Theodore Roosevelt attended.
(Photo: Roosevelt Rough Rider Convention poster, www.lasvegasmuseum.org).
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