Las Vegas, New Mexico

Las Vegas is another of the small towns from the old days, except in the old days, Las Vegas wasn't so small. It was built against the railroad as a center for shipping cattle to the Eastern meat processors. It's in a beautiful location about an hour east of Santa Fe and an hour-and-a-half south of Raton (via the I-25). Just looking around at the wealth of period architecture, you can see that this was once a larger, more vibrant and more prosperous city. A fair bit of the original architecture has survived but there isn't much new construction going on downtown. I'm fine with that because I like to see the older stuff get refurbed while still maintaining the look and ambience of what made Las Vegas what it once was. That gawdy, new, big city stuff just wouldn't be right here.

I took my first drive around Las Vegas back in 1988. I saw a nice, little, sleepy town on the boundary between the plains and the mountains. In 2007, the changes I see in town are mostly from manifestations of the "Santa Fe effect": a lot of folks who've had enough of the glitz, glamour, hype, crowds, and ridiculous cost of living in Santa Fe are settling in the Las Vegas area, bringing their business and businesses with them, revitalizing the local economy in the process. Las Vegas is a mix of old and new New Mexico, and the old and new seem to be getting along quite fine.

Las Vegas is home to the New Mexico State Hospital and to New Mexico Highlands University (the third state university, after UNM in Albuquerque and NMSU in Las Cruces). A few miles east of town is the Las Vegas National Wildlife Refuge, a great place to visit and spend a few hours when the mass avian migrations are happening in spring and fall along the Central Flyway. Just beyond the northwest edge of town is Montezuma, where there is a nice little public hot springs in the very front yard of the Armand Hammer United World College of the American West. The College itself is mostly housed in the Montezuma Castle but there is a beautiful, adobe-construction International Peace and Meditation Pavilion on the grounds, too. Also north of town is Rociada, Pendaries Village & Golf Course and a huge domed chunk of granite sticking high up in the air named El Porvenir. Due north is Storrie Lake State Park (a big windsurfing destination) and that road continues north through Mora and up over the Sangre de Cristo's towards Taos.

The Las Vegas Airport is about five miles northeast of town (although there are no commercial flights happening) and the AmTrak station in town is still in operation. Las Vegas also has a gorgeous, brand new hospital on the east side of town, just off the I-25. Every public school I came across is also of pretty recent construction (New Mexico is one of the few states left in America that puts more of the people's money into schools and education than into prisons (and I fervently hope that this federal "Homeland Security" oxymoron doesn't change that in a negative manner)). I also found city parks all over the place and nearly every one had an extensive new playground for the kids (jungle gyms, slides, monkey bars, swings, teeter-totters, etc.). Things are looking up for this slightly tarnished jewel of the Old West. Prosperity is coming back and the population is rising. If I ever have to leave my paradise in the mountains, Las Vegas is one of the first places I'll be looking at. There's lots and lots of opportunity here and things are just getting started.