{"id":1867,"slug":"plaza-hotel-las-vegas-new-mexico","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["The Plaza Hotel was the Belle of the Southwest — the $25,000 Italianate hotel that a consortium led by Don Benigno Romero opened on the Las Vegas plaza in 1882, three stories of brick and high-ceilinged rooms advertised as the finest hotel in the territory. The town it served was the other Las Vegas — the original one, the Santa Fe Trail's great stop, where the railroad's 1879 arrival had made it the largest city in New Mexico and brought, along with the money, the outlaws: Jesse James visited in 1880, Billy the Kid was jailed just off the plaza, Doc Holliday shot a man in a plaza saloon, and the vigilantes hanged prisoners from a windmill.","The Plaza rose above all of it — the twin staircases from the lobby, the balcony with iron railings, the grand ballroom. In the 1890s the dry climate filled its rooms with tuberculosis patients — the hotel hosted the 'One Lung Club,' the social organization for invalids too sick for exertion. And in June 1899 it hosted the first reunion of Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders — the regiment that had trained nearby; Roosevelt stayed twice and later announced a presidential candidacy from Las Vegas.","Silent-film producer Romaine Fielding lived at the hotel in 1913 — his ghost sign still marks the west facade. The Mama Lucy Gang of liberal politicians ran the state from its rooms in the 1960s. The meticulous 1980s restoration made it again the anchor of Old Town — the hotel on the plaza where the West's whole cast passed through: trail traders, outlaws, invalids, Rough Riders, and the films that mythologized them all.","The Plaza Hotel is the archive's Belle file — the 1882 Italianate hotel on the Las Vegas plaza that hosted the first Rough Riders reunion and the One Lung Club, in the original Las Vegas where the Santa Fe Trail met the railroad and the outlaws."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["The Plaza Hotel is the archive's other-Las-Vegas file — the 1882 'Belle of the Southwest' on the plaza where Jesse James visited and Billy the Kid was jailed, host of the 1899 Rough Riders reunion and the tuberculosis patients' One Lung Club, in the Santa Fe Trail town the railroad remade.","A hotel on the old plaza keeps its ballroom — the file's suggestion being that the Plaza's hold is the window over the plaza: the view of the square where the trail ended, the vigilantes hanged, and the Rough Riders drank to their dead."]}],"name":"Plaza Hotel","aliases":[],"type":"HOTEL","type_label":"Hotel","cats":["HAUNTED_LOCATION"],"groups":["hauntings","lodging"],"desc":"Historic hotel with room-310 cigar-smell folklore.","full_desc":"Plaza Hotel is a hotel in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Historic hotel with room-310 cigar-smell folklore. Operator describes renovation in 1982 and addition of the neighboring Ilfeld building in 2006. Reported lore and claims include: Southwest Ghost Hunters Association recounts employee accounts of moving drawers and cigar smells attributed to Byron T. Mills.","address":"230 Plaza","city":"Las Vegas","county":null,"state":"New Mexico","postal":"87701","region":"West","lat":35.604818,"lon":-105.217023,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"ACTIVE","access":"UNKNOWN","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":"https://plazahotellvnm.com/","phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"SGHA provides claim provenance; operator provides hotel identity/history. Operator says built in 1881 while state tourism gives 1882: retain discrepancy and investigate construction/opening distinction.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":58.1,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.85,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.8,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":959,"type":"PHANTOM_SMELL","description":"Southwest Ghost Hunters Association recounts employee accounts of moving drawers and cigar smells attributed to Byron T. Mills. The reports concentrate at Room 310. A hotel in Las Vegas, New Mexico with more than a century of check-ins gives the reports plenty of rooms to work with. It's a reported experience — real to the people who had it, unresolved for everyone else. 'Plaza Hotel, Las Vegas, NM' carries the account. The sound is the signature — visitors listen for it whether or not they believe.","evidence":"REPORTED_EXPERIENCE","evidence_label":"Reported experience","entity":"Byron T. Mills","where":"Room 310","first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.6,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Plaza Hotel, Las Vegas, NM","url":"https://www.sgha.net/plaza-hotel/","publisher":"Southwest Ghost Hunters Association","type":"PARANORMAL_ORGANIZATION","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"Operator describes renovation in 1982 and addition of the neighboring Ilfeld building in 2006. Plaza Hotel's history is documented rather than told — this entry is part of that spine. Media accounts document it — reported history rather than legend. The detail is preserved in 'Plaza Hotel History'. Documented ground is what separates this file from pure legend — this is part of it.","evidence":"MEDIA_REPORTED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Plaza Hotel History","url":"https://plazahotellvnm.com/history/","publisher":"Plaza Hotel","type":"OFFICIAL_SITE","authority":2}}],"legends":[],"entities":[{"name":"Byron T. Mills","claimed_identity":"Byron T. Mills","verified":null,"summary":"Southwest Ghost Hunters Association recounts employee accounts of moving drawers and cigar smells attributed to Byron T. Mills. The reports concentrate at Room 310. The hotel keeps the account on its own record — the sort of haunting a building earns one guest at a time. 'Plaza Hotel, Las Vegas, NM' carries the account. The lore has a face now: Byron T. Mills.","behavior":"Southwest Ghost Hunters Association recounts employee accounts of moving drawers and cigar smells attributed to Byron T. Mills.","area":"Room 310","first_ref":null,"source":{"name":"Plaza Hotel, Las Vegas, NM","url":"https://www.sgha.net/plaza-hotel/","publisher":"Southwest Ghost Hunters Association","type":"PARANORMAL_ORGANIZATION","authority":4}}],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Access details are unverified; research before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Haunted New Mexico","url":"https://www.newmexico.org/haunted/","publisher":"New Mexico Tourism Department","type":"TOURISM","authority":3},{"name":"Plaza Hotel, Las Vegas, NM","url":"https://www.sgha.net/plaza-hotel/","publisher":"Southwest Ghost Hunters Association","type":"PARANORMAL_ORGANIZATION","authority":4},{"name":"Plaza Hotel History","url":"https://plazahotellvnm.com/history/","publisher":"Plaza Hotel","type":"OFFICIAL_SITE","authority":2}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Plaza Hotel (Las Vegas, New Mexico)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Hotel_(Las_Vegas%2C_New_Mexico)","desc":"Hotel in New Mexico, United States","extract":"The Plaza Hotel is a hotel in Las Vegas, New Mexico. It was opened as an upmarket hotel for the booming town in 1882. Since then it has had a complex history. It is listed in the National Register of Historic Places as a contributing property in the Las Vegas Plaza historic district.","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/eb/Plaza_Hotel_LasVegasNM.jpg/330px-Plaza_Hotel_LasVegasNM.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":90,"lat":35.593003,"lon":-105.2276},"counts":{"claims":1,"history":1,"legends":0,"entities":1,"sources":3}}