Plaza Hotel, Las Vegas, New Mexico

Las Vegas, New Mexico was the biggest and most prosperous town in the territory when the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad arrived on the Fourth of July, eighteen seventy-nine. The railroad had tracked the old Santa Fe Trail here. The plaza had been a wagon-train stop since eighteen thirty-five, and within three years the boom was evident in brick.

In eighteen eighty-two, land baron Benigno Romero and partners opened the Plaza Hotel facing the historic square, calling it the Belle of the Southwest. Three stories of Italianate brick made it the finest hotel in New Mexico Territory, drawing travelers, gamblers, and figures like Doc Holliday, who spent time in Las Vegas around eighteen seventy-nine and eighteen eighty. Though New Mexico's capital eventually drew commerce and prestige away from Las Vegas, the hotel survived.

Restored and reopened in nineteen eighty-two, it still stands on the same plaza where the Santa Fe Trail ended.