A Walking Tour of the Plaza and Bridge Street Historic Districts
There are maps of the Plaza and of Bridge Street available.
The archaeological record shows that the fertile valley of Nuestra Senora de los Dolores de Las Vegas Grandes - Las Vegas - was occupied as early as 8,000 B.C. by Paleo-Indicans. Settled Pueblo Indians were present in the area during the 1100s and 1200s until forced out either by drought or aggressors.
In subsequent years, various nomadic Native Americans, including Comanches, camped in the Las Vegas area. A succession of Spanish explorers, beginning with Coronado in 1541, passed though going east in search of the fabled cities of gold.
By the 1790s, the increase of population in the Rio Grande valley caused Spanish settlement to expand out to the eastern face of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. In 1835, twenty-nine individuals applied for and received the Las Vegas land grant from the Mexican government. The Alcalde (administrative justice) of nearby San Miguel del Vado accompanied the settlers to "the meadows", and, in Spanish manner according to the Laws of the Indies they laid out a large plaza and surrounding community.
The first, flat-roofed, log and adobe houses stood side-by-side, one room deep around the Plaza, forming a defensive enclosure into which livestock could be herded in case of attack. This new self-sufficient farming village stood on the Sante Fe Trail and was the first New Mexican settlement encountered by supply trains coming from the United States.
The Trail meant jobs and commerce, and Las Vegas grew to over a thousand people by 1860. During the next twenty years its population quadrupled as it established itself as a major trade center, with businesses as well as residences lining the Plaza.
The arrival of the railroad a mile east of the Plaza in 1879 was a mixed blessing. Though a new town was established with a competing commercial district, the entire city's position as a mercantile center was solidified because it was the first large town to be reached by the railroad. At its peak, Las Vegas' trade area included all of eastern New Mexico from the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains out into the Plains and into western Texas.
The Plaza, which had longed served for parking wagons, also began to change. A windmill, erected in 1876, served briefly as a vigilante gallows. This sign of frontier justice was replaced in 1880 by a bandstand encircled by trees and a picket fence.
Even as Las Vegas prospered through 1905 its trade area was gradually reduced as additional rail lines crossed the territory and Clovis, Tucumcari, Roswell and Carlsbad rose in competition with Las Vegas.
A local agricultural depression in the mid-twenties which caused the closing of four of the city's six banks, followed by the depression of the 1930s, put an end to Las Vegas' prosperity. A long period of dormancy and gradual growth has followed, through which the city has been sustained by its two largest employers, the Las Vegas Medical Center and New Mexico Highlands University.
Today's Plaza, with its gazebo under a canopy of mature trees, reflects efforts of Las Vegas' first historic preservation movement led by Rheua Pearce and Johnny Villegas in the 1960s. The community continues to show through architecture and land use the intersection of the cultures and people that settled Las Vegas.
|
Here is a list of the buildings on this tour:
|
|
|
This page is taken from the brochure "Historic Las Vegas, New Mexico: Along the Santa Fe Trail", a project of the Citizens' Committee for Historic Preservation, Las Vegas,
New Mexico. The brochure was made possible in part by the New Mexico Department of Tourism, the Federal Highway Administration through a New Mexico Scenic Byways Grant, and City of Las Vegas Lodgers Tax with assistance from the Historic Preservation Division, Office of Cultural Affairs, State of New Mexico, 228 E. Palace, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501. The brouchure was financed in part by federal funds from the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. Portions of it are from earlier CCHP publications and include the work of Chris Wilson, Ellen Threinen, Amy Caldwell, Elmo Baca, Scott Clark, Olivia Lovato, Robin Oldham, Katherine Slick, Adelita Medina, Stephen Whitmore, Mary Whitmore, and Raymundo Valdez.
