Page 8 - 2019 Las Vegas & San Miguel Co. Visitors Guide

Las Vegas: The Wildest of the Wild West
By Howard Bryan, Author
Even the Wild West stories of Dodge City, Deadwood and Tombstone, pale in comparison to the incredible story of Las Vegas, New Mexi- co, for decades considered the most violent Wild West community on America’s Western frontier. Due largely to its strategic location on the San- ta Fe Trail, and later as an end of track town on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, the community reeled under the impact of Indian warfare, conquering armies, insurrectionists, outlaws and gunfighters.
It was the coming of the railroad in the sum- mer of 1879 that brought the greatest influx of frontier riff-raff to Las Vegas, many of them hell-raisers from Dodge City and other Kan- sas cowtowns who took over the new business district that was springing up in the vicinity of the railroad depot. Included were murderers, robbers, thieves, gamblers, swindlers, gunmen, dance hall girls, vagrants and tramps.
They were known by such names as Rat- tlesnake Sam, Dirty-Face Mike, Hatchet-Face Kit, Cockeyed Frank, Light-Fingered Jack, Jimmie the Duck, Johnny Behind the Rocks, Hold-Out Jack, Six-Shooter Johnny, Black- Eyed Bruce, Double-Out Sam, Stuttering Tom, Billy-Be-Damned, Durango Kid, Kansas Kid, Kickapoo George, Bullshit Sam, Hog-Foot Jim and Handsome Harry the Dance Hall Rustler.
New Mexico historian Ralph Emerson Twitchell, who was an early Las Vegas resident, summed it up like this: “Without exception, in the days of the construction of the Santa Fe Rail- way into the Southwest, there was no town which harbored a more disreputable gang of gamblers, desperadoes and outlaws than did Las Vegas. They controlled, for a while, the local peace offi- cers, and the dance halls and public resorts were the scenes of many shooting affrays and robber- ies. In the new town, in the immediate vicinity of the present Castañeda hotel, were located some of the most disreputable saloons, dance halls and resorts ever seen in frontier day. The gambling houses never closed and the gambling fraternity did about as they pleased. It finally became nec- essary to organize a committee of one hundred for the safety of the better classes and visitors to the place. Several desperadoes were summarily dealt with, taken from the jail or from their re- sorts and hung. Notice was served upon every
undesirable to leave forthwith and in this man- ner the town was rid of as desperate a gang of cut-throats and bad men as ever congregated in one place in the Southwest.”
Echoing Twitchell’s view was Miguel A. Otero, governor of New Mexico from 1897 to 1906, and who, like Twitchell, had been an early
Las Vegas resident. Otero wrote: “For
bling hall and variety theater in Las Vegas. Bob Ford even served as a Las Vegas Policeman after killing Jesse James in Missouri. David A. “Myste- rious Dave” Mather, who operated on both sides of the law, was engaged in a number of gun bat- tles as a Las Vegas policeman, during which time he also was accused of train robbery. A crooked justice of the peace known as Hoodoo Brown was a leader of the so-called Dodge City Gang that virtually ruled the new business district. He skipped town, after relieving the body of a mur- der victim of more than $1,000.00.
The good citizens of Las Vegas, tiring of all the violence, began dragging prisoners out of the jail at night and hanging them from a windmill that stood on the town plaza, on at lease one occasion hanging three at a time. One man who claimed that he shot two people by accident was found hanging from the windmill with a sign fastened to his body reading “this is no accident.”
After the windmill was torn down from be- ing a bad influence on the children of Las Ve- gas, who were hanging their dogs in imitation, lynchers began hanging their victims from tele- graph and telephone poles and bridges. Posters were placed around Las Vegas warning all unde- sirables to leave town or “be invited to a grand necktie party, the expense of which will be borne by one hundred substantial citizens.”
Later, after the unwelcome railroad followers had left town, a new crime wave was unleashed
more than a year after the entry of the railroad, it can be stated without fear of contradiction that Las Vegas was the “hottest” town in the country. Such a statement would be substantiated by the record, for one month, which the old files of the (Las Vegas) Daily Optic establish. They show that twenty-nine men were killed in and around Las Vegas, either murdered outright or shot in self-defense or hung by the well-regulated Vigilance Committee. Such a record, I am certain, would be hard to parallel in the history of any of the wild towns of the West.”
Plaza Windmill, c. 1879, courtesy Las Vegas CCHP, No. 0689
Las Vegas saw many famous and notorious figures of the frontier era during its railroad boom days. Billy the Kid complained about the jail accommodations at Las Vegas, saying the jail was a “terrible place to put a fellow in.” John H. “Doc” Holliday operated a saloon and gam- bling hall in Las Vegas and left town after shooting down a drunk and trou- blesome cavalry veteran in front of his business establishment. Jesse James vacationed at the hot spring north of town, keeping a low profile under an assumed name. Lawman Pat Garrett successfully held off a lynch mob that attempted to remove prisoners from his custody at the Las Vegas depot. Monte Verde, a notorious gambling lady who had been a Confederate spy during the Civil War, operated a gam-
on Las Vegas and vicinity by Vicente Silva, a Las Vegas tavern owner who organized a secret orga- nization known as the Society of Bandits of New Mexico, consisting of at least forty native-born Hispanic citizens. The Silva gang, held respon- sible for many murders, rapes, thefts, burglaries and livestock rustling, included at least three members of the Las Vegas police force, includ- ing the notorious Jose Chavez y Chavez, who had been a pal of Billy the Kid. Miguel Otero de- scribed these gangsters “as tough a bunch of bad men as ever gathered outside a penal institution.”
Unlike most of the notorious frontier towns in the American West, most of them were cattle or mining towns where violence lasted for only brief periods. Las Vegas experienced the violent frontier with but few interruptions for more than a half-century, earning it the reputation as the “Wildest of the Wild West.”
Las Vegas lawmen, Green brothers, with prisoners Martinez and Baca, courtesy Andy Kingsbury
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