My Tiny Vegas: Las Vegas, New Mexico News, Stories, Photographs, and More!

Places of the Past

Historic Building and Homes Tour
by Birdie Jaworski

A stately stone building sits sentry at the Bridge Street entrance to the Las Vegas Plaza, its expertly renovated rough-hewn exterior a study in late 19th Century architecture. Now the administrative home of the West Las Vegas School District, the two-story building looks elegant, composed, serene. It wasn't always so self-possessed, however. Like many historic buildings in Las Vegas, this property holds colorful secrets.

"The West Las Vegas Schools administration building used to be the First National Bank," says Maggie Nelson of the Las Vegas Citizen's Committee for Historic Preservation (CCHP). "But the bank moved, and the building was turned into a pool hall and taxi dispatch. It was still a revenue-generating place," Nelson laughs. "We have so much fun and strange history here."

The pool hall created chaos, created instant winners and losers in a world gone mad from depression, from brewing war. It attracted guests from miles away with its illicit activities. One guest, a handsome man of 5' 9" with a chiseled jaw, needed a ride from the pool hall to the airport. Las Vegas resident Leo Montoya, now of Leo's Glass, once ferried one of the pool hall's taxis. He took the call, and picked up the mysterious out-of-towner.

"The weather was terrible, so I had to drop him off at the Plaza Hotel," Montoya reminisces. "I picked him up the next morning to take him to the airport, and I had to keep looking at him. 'You look just like Gene Autry,' I said. He said, 'No, I don't.' Well, then I said to him, 'You sound just like Gene Autry.' He said, 'No, I don't.' I had to stop the taxi. 'You are Gene Autry!' I told him. And it was!"

Las Vegas still lives and breathes history. This Saturday, community members and visitors can take a walk back in time during the Places of the Past Historic Homes and Buildings Tour. Beginning at 10 a.m., participants are invited to gather at the CCHP office at 116 Bridge Street where they will receive a map and instructions.

"We have ten properties open during the tour," explains Nelson. "All of these are open-doored. You may go at your own pace. We have volunteers at each site who tell about the history of the place and answer any questions you may have. We're in our 19th year. This is always a popular event. It brings in a lot of people from around the state and Colorado and Texas."

The tour includes such properties as the Montezuma Castle, whose incredible history spans the coming of the railroad, the home of a Jesuit monestary, a Baptist college headquarters, YMCA, and now the United World College. Visitors will also get to walk inside the old First National Bank were Gene Autry shot pool, tour the beautifully restored J.E. Hurley House with its bootleg liquor back room on 6th street, and explore the old Southern Methodist Church at the corner of 6th and Columbia, now an engineering firm. Other tour-stops include Victorian cottages, restored adobe homes, and gorgeous commercial buildings that display Las Vegas' best.

"From a simple historic places tour, the annual event has grown into a week-long Heritage Week celebration," says Nelson. "The highlight of the tour for out of towners is always the castle. Everyone wants to see it. Of course, it never was a "castle," but it is actually a Queen Anne-stle building, the third hotel in Montezuma, the first two consumed by fire. There were so many fires back then - people used kerosene, everything was shellaced, the firefighting wasn't as accurate as it is today, there was a lot of smoking, and open fireplaces."

Tour participants can purchase tour tickets at the CCHP or the Plaza Hotel. Tickets cost 20 dollars, and allow one to step inside and tour each of the properties on the map with the help of the educated docents.

"This is a great opportunity to learn more about Las Vegas, and to see the inside of some of our most historic buildings," says Nelson. "It transports you to another era."

The Places of the Past History Homes and Buildings Tour, 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Saturday, August 2. Tickets are $20 and available at the CCHP and the Plaza Hotel. For more information, call the CCHP at 425-8803.

Cultural Encounters at Fort Union

by Birdie Jaworski


A ring of wind-scarred red clay barracks once bustled with ordered activity. Wagon trains carting ammunition, grains, the thimble and shine that makes a soldier's life bearable, rolled off the Santa Fe trail, dusty from the long journey from Fort Leavenworth and St. Louis. Men in deep blue uniforms off-loaded precious cargo, storing it in the heavily patrolled depot facilities until it could be shipped to other posts in the Territory. Fort Union breathed with intensity then, a hundred fifty years ago, as soldiers returned from an uncertain field, wounded from Civil War skirmish, from Native American backlash. Men spent weary days guarding the fort, guarding each other. They spent downtime spending hard-earned cash on the painted ladies and hard liquor of Loma Parda's brothel town. Life was difficult, unforgiving, full of surprise and sorrow mixed with the deep beauty of northern New Mexico's rich grasslands.

Today, Fort Union National Monument captures moments in history through exhibit, through carefully preserved structure. This weekend, July 19 and 20, the fort is offering a Cultural Encounters Event, with activities designed to pull participants into its tumultuous past.

"There are many reasons why folks should come to this event," explains park employee Victoria Evan. "It's going to be an exciting couple of days. We will have people in uniform and period costume, we will be firing the cannons, a military band is coming to perform - and in a first for Fort Union, we will be holding a prairie walk. Visitors will get to look at the Fort from a completely new perspective, a view they don't normally get to experience."

The weekend begins Saturday at 9 a.m. with the Raising of the Colors, in which a gigantic flag is unfurled, immediately followed by a mile-and-a-half-long nature walk in which visitors will learn about the history of the earth beneath their feet.

"The nature hike is a first for Fort Union," says park administrator Frank Torres. "Most of our public interpretation to date has been about the military history in general, and this will help get folks out to talk about the geological history of the area, the grasslands, and the timber reserves. When you really go back and look at why Fort Union was established, you will see that it all goes back to its location and the resources that were readily available."

One of the highlights of the weekend - which costs just three dollars for adults, and is free for children 16 and under - is a first-person lecture Sunday at 1 p.m. by John Atkinson on The Life and Times of William Bent. Part of a family that built the most extensive commercial network in the frontier southwest, William Bent outlived the days of trappers and traders, surviving to see his world destroyed by the relentless pressure of white expansion. Atkinson portrays Bent as Bent might have reviewed his colorful life in the days before he died. "William Bent" will share stories of his eventful life, including and the successes, failures and frustrations of trying to bring together three diverse cultures.

"Fort Union National Monument is an extremely significant place in 19th  century history," says Torres. "It had so much to do with the development of the Southwest. Fort Union's presence extended what was once a barron area of small communities sites to more of a developed area. Once the military occupation took place, the American movement occurred, and the southwest really flourished."

Other highlights include a concert by the New Mexico Territorial Brass Band, a lecture by Susan Calafate Boyle on Comerciantes, Arrieros y Peones: New Mexican Contributions to Commercial Developments in the United States, and demonstrations of artillery by volunteers. One of the most popular lectures promises to be one given by Ed Lee Natay on The Long Walk, the enforced round-up and removal of the Navajo from their native lands to the area of Fort Sumter. The park is providing a food vendor for the weekend, and will have an open gift shop where visitors can purchase books, curios, and maps.

"We at Fort Union National Monument have developed a living history program on the Hispanic soldiers of the Civil War," Torres relays. "A lot of folks don't realize this history. It's a big part of the history of the families of this area, and we hope to share this history with as many people as possible. Everyone from the Las Vegas community is invited to attend the entire two days. It will be fun."

For further information, including a schedule of all events, contact the park at (505) 425-8025 or visit the park website at www.nps.gov/foun.

The People Ride the Night

by Birdie Jaworski


The Three Brothers

The black locomotives of the first trains in New Mexico territory belched hot white steam into the tree-lined skies. The Mexican-American war had ended, had left deep distrust in the hearts of the territory citizens, many of whom had lost entire families in the bloody dispute. The largest city in the territory those days was Las Vegas, New Mexico, a bustling destination with a new depot on the railroad. A new town sprung up near the tracks, a couple of miles from the old town Plaza, complete with saloons and a fancy hotel owned by the railroad itself, the now abandoned and said-to-be-haunted Casteneda.

Men followed the train to Las Vegas, men with deep pockets and the raging desire to grow fortunes as big as the wild west itself. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo - the peace treaty that ended the war - did little to protect the rights of New Mexicans, and lawyers encouraged the idea that there was a rich environment that promised vast wealth for those who secured title to the land grants covering most of the territory.

Unscrupulous land speculators pressed across the territory, playing tricks on the Hispanic land owners who had settled in the area with their families. The speculators often resorted to violence and scare tactics to grab the land and sell it to cattle barons, who then fenced off the common lands around Las Vegas, not allowing residents to travel, graze, collect fire wood, even water their animals within the fenced locations.

The residents of the Las Vegas Land Grant grew tired, grew poorer, as cattle began to graze in the newly-enclosed areas. Three brothers decided to take a stand, to help their neighbors fight for what was just, for what would help sustain the people. The oldest, Juan Jose Herrera, was called "El Capitan," for his heroics during the Civil War's Battle of Glorieta. He had been given a commission as a Knights of Labor organizer for northeast New Mexico, and under his leadership, twenty new assemblies of the Hispanic-controlled Knights were formed. The second oldest was Pablo Herrera, a rash fighter who didn't have the patience of his older brother. The youngest was Nicanor Herrera, said to be strong as an ox, and the glue that held his brothers together.

Though Las Vegas was far from the politics of the rest of the growing country, news still made its way to the city via the railroad. The brothers were inspired by stories of labor's struggles in the coal regions of the Alleghenies and in the western mines of Colorado and Utah. El Capitan continued to fight injustice through the established legal system by challenging the inequality in pay between the white and Hispanic workers of the railroad, eventually establishing the first Hispanic-controlled political party in the United States, El Partido Unido, "The United Peoples Party."

Pablo Herrera couldn't wait for the slow movement of change started by his older brother. He paced the floors of his home's kitchen, giving everyone in earshot a mouthful of emotion, a torrent of words about the dastardly deeds done to the people in the name of progress. He organized a secret group called Las Gorras Blancas - "The White Caps," named because of the white hoods they wore to disguise their identities.

The White Caps quickly stole the hearts of the people. Brothers, fathers, sons - soon numbering over 1500 - joined together on late night rides through the roll and pitch Land Grant prairie with the sole goal of cutting cattle baron fences, setting the spirit of the land free. They stole through the cover of darkness, white hoods protecting their names so that neighbors couldn't testify against them in court. Each night, miles and miles of barbed wire fence were destroyed, left in pieces too small to resurrect. They took torch to railroad bridges, to railroad ties. Many of the men cutting fences were hired during the daylight hours to rebuild the fence, creating a strange mosaic of perpetual motion.

In a display of force, Las Gorras Blancas rode into the Las Vegas Plaza on horseback, over 300 men armed, hooded, ready to face land speculator, to face cattle baron. They posted their platform on printed handbills, explaining "Our purpose is to protect the rights and interests of the people in general and especially of the helpless classes. We want the Las Vegas Grant settled to the interest of all concerned... If the fact that we are law abiding citizens is questioned come out to our houses and see the hunger, and desolation we are suffering, and 'this' is the result of the deceitful and corrupt methods of 'bossism. Be fair and just and we are with you, do otherwise and take the consequences. (signed) The White Caps, 1500 Strong and Gaining Daily."

To the establishment, Las Gorras Blancas were outlaws. To the people, they were heros. Every one of the nominees of El Capitan's El Partido Unido won on the next election day. These wins included a seat at the New Mexico State Legislator for Pablo Herrera and a judgeship for Juan Jose Herrera, both of whom worked through the government to right the wrongs done in San Miguel County. Eventually, Pablo was assassinated outside Our Lady of Sorrows Church. Juan Jose moved his family to Idaho. Nicanor died of old age while working on the family ranch in El Porvenir. Spanish land grants have been lost in every state of what used to be part of Mexico with one exception, New Mexico. However, the struggle to preserve or restore the land grants in New Mexico continues to this day.

Civil War Weekend at Pecos National Historical Park

by Birdie Jaworski


The Glorieta Memorial on I-25

The Sangre de Cristo mountains loom between high desert and open plains, protecting a circular valley that once housed quiet ranchlands, an important stage stop on the Santa Fe Trail. Today the land is marked with blood, the site of the Civil War's "Gettysburg of the West," the Battle of Glorieta Pass. Travelers driving down Interstate 25 might notice a dirt drive housing a hand-painted red, white, and blue memorial, covered in eclectic messages.

In the agony of a nation at war with itself, the Confederate invasion of New Mexico Territory in 1862 was a relatively minor drama. The Rebels dreamed of access to the Santa Fe Trail and the treasure-filled gold mines of California and Colorado. They dreamed of changing the course of the terrible war, of turning the tide in the South's favor, and fulfilling their own personal manifest destinies of a mighty Confederate nation bounded on both sides by pure ocean waters. The Union Army, however, had other plans.

On the morning of March 26, 1862, a group of exhausted Union volunteers from Colorado left Camp Lewis on a reconnaissance mission to scope out the location and size of the Confederate forces, a rowdy cadre of Texans. They found them at Glorieta Pass, armed and ready with short swords and Colt Navy pistols. The battle was swift and vicious. In this most westernmost campaign of the entire Civil War, 4,000 Union and 3,000 Confederate soldiers engaged in combat, with the Confederacy winning tactical victories with every major battle but still returning to Texas empty-handed, defeated by the harsh New Mexican countryside and the Union's determined people. More than 280 men died at Glorieta with their dreams, making the battle the central event that shattered the western dreams of the Confederate States of America.

Three days over this weekend, Pecos National Historical Park will host a Civil War extravaganza, meant to commemorate the bloody battle, 146 years to the week after the event. A three-dollar entrance fee for persons over the age of 16 allows one to experience the sights, sounds, and memories of the war's biggest New Mexico battle. The weekend begins 9:30 a.m. Friday, with a Battlefield Clean-Up. Volunteers will meet at Kozlowski's Trading Post, where transportation will be provided to the battlefield. Helpers are asked to bring work gloves if they have them.

Civil War re-enactors from the First Colorado Volunteer Infantry, the Artillery Company of New Mexico, and the 1st Louisiana Special Battalion will speak on the grueling, deadly life and times of Civil War soldiers both Saturday and Sunday. Both Union and Confederate re-enactments will occur. The realistic plays will be interspersed by black powder demonstrations where weapons from the time period will be displayed and discharged.

Several experts will provide research, information, and discussion on the war, its place in our country's history, its impact on New Mexico landscape and populations. Local author Don Alberts will speak about the Glorieta Battlefield Unit of Pecos National Park. Park volunteer Dr. Bob Mallin will speak about Civil War surgery. Local author Jim Taylor from New Mexico will speak about the history of the Civil War in the Southwest.

Two hour van tours of the Battle of Glorieta Pass will be available all weekend. Advanced reservations are encouraged for these tours, which cost two dollars per person. Vans will skirt the battlefield, as tour guides point out and discuss landmarks and locations.

For more information, schedule, or to schedule a van tour, please call the Pecos National Historical Park at 505-757-7241.

The Steps of the Faithful

by Birdie Jaworski


Los Hermanos Penitentes drag heavy wooden crosses during Holy Week in 1904. Photo courtesy of the Las Vegas CCHP.

Holy Week begins Sunday, begins with an event chronicled in all four Gospels - Palm Sunday, a remembrance of Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, when people lining the road pressed their best cloaks, pressed branches of small trees into the dry earth before him in a gesture of admiration and respect. Today, Catholics hold stark green blessed palm fronds, or boughs of native trees, during Palm Sunday Mass as they participate in the Lord's Passion, a recital of Jesus' last steps before death and resurrection.

This year, Holy Week begins after a forward-thinking declaration from the Vatican. Pope Benedict XVI, through his steadfast Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti - the Vatican's specialist on sin and penance - has brought the seven deadly sins up to date by adding seven new ones for the age of globalisation. The list, published this week in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's newspaper, came as the Pope deplored today's "decreasing sense of sin" and warns the faithful that causing environmental devastation or allowing genetic manipulations which alter DNA or compromise embryos will book a sure trip to hell.

Las Vegas, New Mexico, has seen many Holy Week observations in its centuries of history. A hundred years ago, school children filed onto the Plaza the day following the blessing of palms, books left to gather spring wind dust, for several full days of prayer and fasting. They rotated past a carved wooden state of Christ kept in the churchyard, his feet dark from the oils of supplicants' hands and lips, each child kneeling, offering secret prayer and intention as they intoned Latin chants.

For many decades, Las Vegans weren't allowed to conduct business, chop wood, even start a car from Wednesday through Easter. Old grandmothers cautioned the tempted with warnings that chopping wood might "harm Jesus," as he roamed town in invisible robes. Musicians kept guitars carefully stored, away from wandering hands that might invoke Jesus' wrath with a few unthinking chords.

Wailing prayerful chants, and the thin echo of reed pipes called men of Las Vegas to Mount Calvary on Ash Wednesday. They stole into a simple adobe morada, a secret church of the Los Hermanos Pentitentes, the penitent brothers, where they knelt on hardened dirt floor and prayed the Stations of the Cross. The brothers sang hymns of praise and passion, sang loud and heavy, their voices echoing from the pinon-laced hill across the wind-whipped plains.

Los Hermanos Penitentes consisted of men throughout Northern New Mexico including Las Vegas who, to atone for their sins, practiced severe penance. In each morada, the community participated in bloody ceremonies meant to emulate the sufferings of Christ. One by one, the brothers bowed before a Sangrador who - with a jagged piece of glass - gouged crisscrosses on their backs. The penitents would keep their wounds open and raw until Easter, often by rubbing rock salt in them.

The brothers assembled each Good Friday,  with one lucky man chosen to be the Cristo. Against the dull crack of horse whips, they proceeded to Mount Calvary. The Cristo dragged a heavy wooden cross behind him, his shoulders aching from the weight. At the top of the hill, the Cristo was lashed so tightly to the anchored cross that his skin turned black and puffy.

Rome didn't sanction the brotherhood for years, until the late 1940's, by which time membership had dramatically fallen. It still exists today, in small secret pockets of faithful members who continue to relive the Passion of Christ in as fully physical a way as possible. The old adobe moradas, once so mysterious and steeped in spirituality, toppled inward.

Life and Catholic practices have clearly changed in Las Vegas, in northern New Mexico, even in environmentally-aware Rome. But the influence of the Penitentes, of every group that desires to relive the sufferings of Christ, still breathes every Holy Week. While the faithful attend modern services full of song and uplifting praise, there are those who still quite literally carry the cross.

Ghost Plane

78 years ago a young man sat on the edge of dusty forever. His airplane's wheels dug into dry prairie. He didn't know the grass would soon lift from the earth, carve across the Great Plains in clouds of fury and death. You can see this man against an interior wall in the Las Vegas, New Mexico Railway Depot, his handsome face covered in aviator's goggles, encased in framed glass. Two men stood behind the fuselage. They hugged one another, dark intertwined shadows against the drought-scarred land.

The Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce leased the parcel beneath his plane one year before, plunked down earnest money for a 40-acre pasture. They drove out herds of thin cattle, a small handful of poor squatters, declared the parched earth an airfield. A local booster club gathered their men, carried buckets of thick white paint and heavy boar's hair brushes to the pasture. They followed Herbert Hoover's strict orders to label their space, painted "Las Vegas" on the hills, a careful circle around the airfield, on the evaporated land so that future aircraft would know they would be welcomed with home-cooked meals, a stuffed cotton bed. The paint dried quickly in the New Mexican sun. The men looked at their creation, added an arrow so that wayward pilots could find the landing strip, even though one was not yet smoothed into the crusty surface.

The residents of Las Vegas patted each other on the back. Not many cities in the Southwest sported an official runway, a place of potential international commerce. Men visited the spot, sometimes taking wives sporting reed-woven picnic baskets filled with chili and tortillas. No planes touched down, not then, not yet, but the city people knew it would soon happen. They added gates at both ends of the field for fuel trucks, and a tall wind sock made of tight white canvas.

The budding airfield caught the eye of Transcontinental Air Transport. TAT sent a courier to north east New Mexico with an important letter. Las Vegas may be one of our official stops, the letter read. Your town may be famous, a place where weary travelers stop on coast-to-coast journeys. We're sending our president, the letter continued. Expect a visit from Charles Lindbergh on October 23rd.

Thousands of Las Vegans packed the airfield. Children carried tiny American flags. Women wore their Sunday best and gently pressed fancy combs of glazed horn into their hair. The sun shot patterns of long-legged men across the soil as the people held handkerchiefs to their noses as Lindbergh landed in a black plume of exhaust.

This moment echoes forever in the Depot's waiting room. The hugging men speak for Las Vegas, for a future not yet realized, not yet understood, a future desperately wanted. The TAT didn't share that hug. They choose Clovis as their official stop. Las Vegas didn't stop leaning into the prairie wind. They caught Lindbergh's passion for flight, and eleven years later - after depression, after a decade of sifting dust - opened the airfield to regular traffic.

Lindbergh never visited Las Vegas again. But somehow he still lives here, on the edge of the grasslands, just behind the train tracks, on a quiet wall only travelers see. His face is hidden in shadowbox glare, but his adventurous spirit radiates, flies past the perceptual boundaries of time and space, lands in the hearts of all Las Vegas' people.