We took a day trip to Las Vegas, New Mexico, a very historic town about 50 miles northeast of our house. It was a thriving community on the Old Santa Fe Trail in the 1800s and by the late 1800s it was the largest city in New Mexico. The arrival of the railroad in 1879 boosted its fortunes but with the decline of rail travel in the 1950s its economy suffered. Fred Harvey established one of his finest railside hotels in Las Vegas in 1899, the Castaneda Hotel. It fell into decay but is currently being restored by the same group that restored the Harvey House, La Posada, in Winslow.
