New Mexico: Cimarron and Las Vegas

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The TV show Longmire is filmed in Las Vegas, New Mexico because there is less snow there in the spring than in Wyoming.

Sandy and I and our Albuquerque friends, Kathy and Charles, recently stayed at The Plaza Hotel in a room on the second floor overlooking Longmire’s office. It is the Tommy Lee Jones room. 

At the St. James Hotel, up north in Cimarron, just after Fort Union, they don’t really know who stayed where. Their guests were Jesse James, Doc Holliday, Frederick Remington, The Earps, Kit Carson, Bat Masterson, William F. Cody, Annie Oakley, David Crockett (nasty cousin of the real one), Uncle Dick Wooten, Clay Allison and Whitey Bulger. Doc actually practiced his dentistry in town. 

On the first floor is the saloon that has bullet holes in the tin ceiling. We ate there. Charles had elk. At least it wasn't pronghorn. 27 men were killed in gunfights in the saloon. And yes, the hotel is haunted. Room #18 Is haunted so badly that it has a hasp with a lock on it and it is NEVER rented. Something about a poker game where someone won the hotel, only to be shot in the back and killed before he could claim it. He was staying in room #18 at the time.

We have been to Deadwood and Tucson and Cody and Madrid and Meeteetse and Truckee and Gallup and Moab and Tombstone, but nothing compares to this cowboy western village of Cimarron. Population 991. Due east of Taos.

Christopher Lloyd was at The Plaza for two weeks, just before we arrived. Tony Soprano’s sister and an actor from Law And Order were there also. The office door next to the antique store says Sheriff’s Office Absaroka County Wyoming. A woman tourista was going on and on about being Walter Longmire’s biggest fan in Ohio, and would the shop owner pass this news on to him when she sees him next? The antique shop store keeper said, “Why don’t you tell him yourself, he is sitting right there.”

Longmire usually sits in the park across the street studying his script. He is very welcoming to fans. His cabin is nearby, up in the hills on the old Santa Fe Trail. Did you know that he is Australian?

 Our welcoming host, Sean, at The Plaza, had a part in another movie filmed there called “The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez.”

When they film Longmire, they have to change all the license plates in the plaza from New Mexico to Wyoming.

Sandy loved Cimarron, but I could live easily in Las Vegas, Nuevo Mexico. You can buy a 5 bedroom, brand new house with a two car garage for $275,000 in Albuquerque, or a brand new two bedroom for $155,000 with a two car garage, for even less, in Las Vegas.  

Cimarron had a nice little house for $ 67,000. You can even get a full size Coca Cola out of a vending machine for 75 cents.

When a St. James patron was leaving the saloon for the night, the desk clerk said, “Good night Curley, and watch out for the bears on your way home.”

She was serious.            

YCMTS up. Well, maybe the Whitey Bulger part.

your amigo,

Roberto Wyatt Tocino