A Fun Excursion to Las Vegas
Castenada Hotel in Las Vegas, NM
Several years ago, when I first came to New Mexico, a friend and I spent a day exploring some of Las Vegas. She had grown up there. We wandered through some shops and had lunch in a neat spot on the town square. My thought then was how much that looked like Santa Fe or Albuquerque. At the time I had no familiarity with the traditional structure of small towns. Although I lived In a couple of places that were laid out in the same way. I never realized the town square was characteristic of so many American towns.
After lunch we explored the old Plaza hotel. As you might guess from the name, the hotel is on the square. The Plaza dates from 1882 and has been totally restored. The hotel is reported to be haunted and I talked to several of the employees who told me about their encounters with the resident ghost.
Recently my husband and I were in Las Vegas to visit another hotel - the Castaneda. The Castenada was built in 1898. In the days of the Wild West, this was a Harvey House train stop on the Santa Fe Trail, much like the La Fonda in Santa Fe and the Alvarado which used to be in Albuquerque. Sadly the Alvarado was torn down in 1970.
I became interested in Harvey Houses as a result of my RV adventures through much of the southwestern US. Over the years we visited and stayed in several of the western Harvey House hotels such as those at the Grand Canyon.
According to their website, the Castenada was Fred Harvey's first trackside hotel. It's built in the Mission Revival style and was the prototype for the later Harvey Houses. Closed for many years, the revamped Castenada reopened in 2019. A lot of colorful characters passed through Las Vegas! Many of these fellows had names that we all instantly recognize like Billy the Kid, Doc Holliday, Jesse James, and Wyatt Earp. I’ll be back again to take more photos. This will be a continuing series of posts. The hotel has a magnificent front on another street and I want to a some more shots of the hotel all around. I believe the bar and restaurant may be open now and we’d like to stop in for lunch.
There are some great Facebook groups about Las Vegas and a Harvey House group. Here’s a link to the Mary Coulter Harvey House group