Lamy: The Junction That Santa Fe Built Around

Lamy exists because the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway could not get its mainline into Santa Fe. The grades over the mountains were too steep, so when the transcontinental route pushed west across New Mexico in eighteen eighty, it bypassed its own namesake city entirely. A short branch line , eighteen miles long , was built from this desert junction to Santa Fe, making Lamy the actual connection point for everyone who wanted to travel to or from New Mexico's capital by rail.

The brick depot built in nineteen oh nine still stands, a handsome Southwestern-style station in a landscape where almost nothing else exists. The Fred Harvey Company built El Ortiz Hotel just east of the depot in nineteen ten to feed and house the transferring passengers; it closed in nineteen forty-two and was demolished. Amtrak's Southwest Chief still stops at Lamy today on its Los Angeles to Chicago run, one of the last mainline train stops serving Santa Fe.