One of the spots in town where the past is the most alive and accessible is at the Historic Plaza Hotel. Built on the Northwest corner of the town Plaza in 1882, the Italianate-style structure houses a casual Victorian dining room where you can taste local cuisine, Byron T’s Saloon which features live local entertainment most Friday and Saturday nights and often has a ‘real’ cowboy or two perched on a barstool, the Ilfeld Ballroom which can cater conferences, banquets and, of course, features entertainment and dances, and lovely guest rooms with historic decor and ambiance.
The hotel hasn’t always been as vibrant as it is today. After the boom days associated with the arrival of the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad in 1879 went bust, the original hotel known as the “Belle of the Southwest,” and the adjacent “Great Emporium” of merchant Charles Ilfeld fell into disrepair.
Its Old West credentials are solid. Doc Holliday had a dentist’s office in town, and Billy the Kid hung out there. Teddy Roosevelt recruited some of his Rough Riders in Las Vegas and spent a not-so-rough stay at the local hot-springs castle. And before that, this was a stop on the Santa Fe Trail.
Las Vegas’s ill fortune in the 20th century is its good fortune in the 21st. Because the economy collapsed in the early part of the 1900s, no one was tearing down old buildings to make way for new ones. Now many buildings have been restored, but Las Vegas hasn’t been covered in stucco in an attempt to modify it, and tourists are only beginning to trickle in. Take a trip there, and you can get lost in the history and the architecture.
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