Lost Las Vegas Photo 4

Southside of the Las Vegas Plaza during the Santa Fe Trail times
Photo Courtesy of Museum of N.M.
# 42326
6. Southside of the Plazaca. 1865-1877
This view of the Plaza demonstrates the wealth and importance of Las Vegas during the latter Santa Fe Trail days. For Las Vegas and its merchants wool and hides, or lana y cueros, became the means of trade on the Trail. By the 1870's, Las Vegas had 2,000 inhabitants while there was over 500,000 sheep in the county. Oldtimers said "at shearing time wagons lined up all the way out to Romeroville[four miles South] while awaiting their turn to unload."*

On the Plaza, Territorial Style architecture was dramatically exhibited with seven two-story adobe structures being built. Here on this side of the Plaza were the merchants Major May Hays, the Jaffas, the Friedmans, the Rosenwalds, the Romeros, the Dolds, and Charles Blanchard's second store. On June 8, 1977 a large fire destroyed or damaged the buildings from the wagons in the photo, left to the end of the block, making room for the commercial Victorian buildings to come.

*Lynn Perrigo, Gateway to Glorieta,pg.34

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