New Mexico Vintage Photos
| These New Mexico photographs were found among the large collection of photos from the Denver Public Library collection. These photos are a few of the ones I found by using their search engine and entering key words such as New Mexico, Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Las Vegas. The collection is also part of an American Memory, Library of Congress collection titled History of the American West. This collection also has a search engine for photos, which I found much easier to use than the one for the Denver Library pages.
To see a larger version of each photo, click on the photo. This will take you to the Denver Library page so, you will need to use the back button on you browser or mouse to return to this page. |
 | View of the Montezuma Hotel (aka the "Phoenix") located six miles northwest of Las Vegas, New Mexico. Photo taken between 1886 and 1901.
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| At the opening banquet, April 17, 1882, then governor Miguel Otero, Jr. said that "...emperor Moctozemua had disappeared from view amid the clouds....tonight we hail his coming in the new splendid halls of Montezuma." |
| View of the dining room at the Hotel Montezuma. 1886-1901 All of the Hotels & Restaurants built by the A.T. & S.F. were run by Fred Harvey, known as "Civilizer of the West". Harvey would import fresh fruits and vegetables from Mexico to serve in the dinning room of the Montezuma. |  |
 | Montezuma Hotel was built by the A.T. & S.F. Railroad., and people from all over the nation came to bathe in the hot springs near by. A trolly took people from Las Vegas N.M. to Montezuma and back. Montezuma was also the first building in New Mexico to have electrical lighting. |
The first railroad to enter New Mexico was the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe Railroad (The A.T. & S. F.). It entered across the Colorado-New Mexico border in Northeast via the mountain branch of the Santa Fe Trail. During the "heyday" of the railroad, Las Vegas became a major shipping center for Northern New Mexico.
The A.T. & S. F. built hotels and resorts every where it went in the west. There were travel posters in depots across the country showing the exotic lands and people of the southwest. Some of these posters showed artists renderings of Taos Pueblo, Santa Fe, and the hot springs resort near the Montezuma Hotel. The Montezuma Hotel was considered one of the "classiest" hotels for its time. The A.T. & S. F. also built a depot and the Alvarado Hotel in Albuquerque New Mexico. The Alvarado was the stopping place for many people wanting to visit New Mexico. It was sadly torn down sometimes in 1969. A replica has been built in the same location, but for people who remember the elegance of the original, it will never be the same.
 Before the railroad reached New Mexico, Alburquerque (which is now the area of Albuquerque called Old Town) was a small villa made up of Hispanic farmers along the Rio Grande. The railroad was built a couple of miles east of Alburquerque, in an area that is now the Down Town district of today's Albuquerque. The railroad, plus its central location, made Albuquerque grow into the major city in New Mexico.
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