Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
I heard a report the other day that the St. James Hotel in Cimarron is closing. Another Wild West landmark goes down.
The St. James is where I got the best steak I’ve ever eaten, but that wasn’t so long ago, when its owners’ focus was more on fine dining than cowboy accommodations. Back in the day, it was a rough and rowdy place, to say the least.
Lots of shoot-em-ups, dozens of killings — one estimate I read had the total at 26 dead. Traveling lawmen and notorious outlaws frequented the place, and stories have been passed down about visits from Wyatt Earp, his brother and their wives; Jesse James and his favorite room (14); Buffalo Bill Cody and his showstopping sharpshooter Annie Oakley; and a disturbing story about the murder of three Buffalo Soldiers by Davy Crockett’s outlaw son.
All the above, except for that delicious steak, I got off Wikipedia, an invaluable way in which we now keep our histories. I’m grateful for this online public repository of history and knowledge, but I wish our physical history wasn’t disappearing.
It’s occurring all over, but it’s particularly visible in the rural areas. Here in Santa Rosa where I live, for example, the Route 66 landmarks are slowly being lost to the erosion of time. Drive the backroads all over New Mexico and you’ll see roadside remnants of our collective past.
Old gas stations, general stores and collapsed homes whisper their stories in places like Pastura, about 20 miles west of Santa Rosa. It was an old steam-engine railroad stop that got left behind by Route 66, built several miles to the north. Except for a handful of residents, Pastura is essentially a ghost town now, but history remains.
In 1937, the late great Rudolfo Anaya was born there; both Pastura and Santa Rosa proudly claim him as their own. His imprint upon Chicano literature in particular is an indelible mark on history, especially in New Mexico and the Southwest.
And in the 1880s, Billy the Kid found “family” in these parts. He took a common name in Pastura, calling himself a Bonney en route to an outlaw’s life and an early death.
The Kid also visited the St. James — along with his eventual killer, Pat Garrett — but history records nothing spectacular from their visits to Cimarron.
The St. James grew up along the Santa Fe Trail and began its decline when the railroads bypassed Cimarron. And as you might expect with a 150-year-old building, the hotel wasn’t always “alive;” it’s been boarded up before, and reopened a couple of times over the years (the last time in 2009, about when I got my steak).
Maybe someone will come around again to reopen this site on the National Registry of Historic Places, but until then we can only hope it will be slow falling into disarray.
History tells us who we are. It tells us how we became who we are today, and it’s a good barometer for our future. That’s why the study of history is so important, and why we should value and respect all that our forebears built before us.
Not every closure is as historically significant as the St. James, but the buildings that housed our past always have a story to tell. It makes traveling around this Land of Enchantment worth the stops along the way.
Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at: