Castañeda Rediscovered by Stephen Fried
In the late morning of June 24, 1899, a Santa Fe train carrying Teddy Roosevelt and his entourage of political hangers-on in straw hats and fellow soldiers in their old uniforms was barreling its way toward one of the most important cities in the west: the original Las Vegas, the one in northeastern New Mexico. It was, in U.S. history, the day of the first Rough Riders reunion, celebrating the anniversary of the end of the Spanish-American War. But for Las Vegas and the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe Railway (its new name after recently emerging from bankruptcy), this was the national debut of the stunning new trackside hotel, the Castañeda. It was designed not only to thrill visitors, but to usher in a whole new era of American tourism.
with lush, inviting gardens just off the train tracks-was the Santa Fe’s gateway to the new Southwest. And to make sure it received all the attention it deserved, the railroad made a bold publicity move. When every major city in the country vied to host the Rough Riders reunion, the Santa Fe made a deal to ensure that Roosevelt—with the nation’s press in tow—would hold that celebration in Las Vegas, and showcase the Castañeda. When Roosevelt stepped out of his Pullman car at the Las Vegas depot, a huge wave of people pushed toward him. He was, “almost lifted bodily from his feet by the press of persons anxious to grasp his hand,” according to one reporter. And over the next two days of parades, rodeos and other events, thousands filled the streets day and night for an amazing celebration of patriotism and frontier exuberance, honoring the joys of the nation’s past and the excitement for the coming American century. Pictures of all the events ran in newspapers all over the country, including a full page in the New York Times. Photo Courtesy Las Vegas Citizens’ Committee for Historic Preservation, LVCCHP, Archives It was arguably the Railroad management had decided that the greatest, and certainly the most high-profile event Southwest was no longer going to be a stinking to ever take place in Las Vegas, NM. Until now. desert you hoped to ride through quickly on the way to California. It was going to become a tour- Last November, a crew from one of the nation’s ist destination, the “Land of Enchantment” and highest-rated and most beloved television shows— “America’s Orient”—where you could experience CBS Sunday Morning—quietly snuck into Las Venot only breathtaking natural beauty, but the His- gas. They wanted to be there at the very moment panic, Native-American and European cultures, when the Castañeda was officially reborn—as a uniquely intermingled. recreation of its original 1898 sign was unveiled. The railroad was planning to create a string of That would signal the beginning of a year-long prooasis hotels all across the Southwest, to be overseen cess of reopening the old hotel, breathing new life by its world-famous hospitality partner, run by into the section of town it once anchored, and helpBritish-born entrepreneur Fred Harvey and his son ing reconnect Las Vegas to New Mexico tourism. Ford. Their company, simply called “Fred Harvey,” At 3:59 pm on November 4th, the couple who was based in Kansas City but for over twenty years were saving the hotel--entrepreneur Allan Affeldt had run all the trackside restaurants along the Santa and artist Tina Mion, who had previously saved La Fe, which expanded to almost eighty cities from Posada, the Harvey hotel in Winslow, AZ--were Chicago west to the Pacific, and south to the Gulf standing on its balcony. With them were many of the local workers who had been devoted to the $5 of Mexico. Fred Harvey dining rooms and lunch counters million restoration of the Castaneda, along with were staffed by the most renowned servers in the CBS correspondent Michelle Miller. Down below world—the “Harvey Girls,” the country’s first major the courtyard was filled with visitors—some from all-female national work force. The company had Las Vegas and Santa Fe, but others from all over the recently added dining cars and station retail stores, country who had come to see this event, includand was experimenting with hotels. ing many of Fred Harvey’s descendants. They were The Castañeda—designed to look like a spec- standing in the same place where the crowds had tacular U-shaped Mission Revival-style mansion gathered to greet Roosevelt. 14 | Las Vegas & San Miguel Co. Visitors Guide 2019
Castañeda postcard
As the CBS Sunday Morning cameras rolled, the huge white cloth obscuring the sign was pulled and a tremendous cheer went up. The Castañeda, and Las Vegas, were coming back! Las Vegas and Fred Harvey have been intertwined for over 130 years, since the first railroad train crossed the Raton Pass into NM on July 4, 1879, and Las Vegas became the first major city in New Mexico connected by rail to the east. Long a major mercantile center and health retreat for those arriving by horseback and wagon on the Santa Fe Trail, the city was turned into a cowboy-novel town almost overnight. Billy the Kid, Doc Holliday and other legendary western characters regularly made headlines in the local newspapers, especially the Las Vegas Optic, which went from weekly to daily, allowing its opinionated and often hilarious editor, Russel Kistler, more space for his one-liners. Reporting a new reward for “the Kid,” he wrote, “Here is an opportunity for some daring man to engrave his name upon the roll of dead heroes.” After Billy was killed, Kistler reported he had secured his severed trigger finger, which was in a jar of alcohol on his desk (and may still be in Las Vegas.) Soon the Optic was reporting on a new rising western hero in town, railroad restaurant entrepreneur Fred Harvey, who in his mid-forties had just recently begun his business, with eateries in Topeka, Florence and Lamy, Kansas, and La Junta, Colorado. Las Vegas was to be the launching point for a dramatic expansion in New Mexico. Before the depot could be finished, the railroad parked three old dining cars on a side track, which were quickly refurbished and turned into a beautifully appointed restaurant. The Harvey formula was New York or Chicago quality dining in the middle of nowhere, with fresh ingredients brought in on the train.
The railroad then started building a new health resort for Fred to run, the Montezuma, just outside of town at the Hot Springs, while at the same time expanding across New Mexico from its Las Vegas hub, with new stations—and Harvey restaurants— in Deming, Lamy, Raton, Rincon, San Marcial, Vaughn and Albuquerque. And the Optic covered Harvey’s rise in glorious detail—including every time he became angry at his staff for performing below perfection (describing him firing his Deming manager by heaving him out the front door with “the dining room equipment” following him “in quick order”) or was laid low by the stress of commuting between his home in Kansas and Las Vegas. The Montezuma’s grand opening was in spring of 1882. The resort opened to wonderful reviews in American and British papers, but unfortunately was a flop as a business, and within a year Fred was pulling out of it to focus on the trackside restaurants in town and across the state. This is when the “Harvey Girls” were born. Originally, restaurants in NM had male African-American servers, who often found themselves unwittingly in racial incidents. After yet another one in nearby Raton, Harvey was persuaded to change his wait staff to all single women hired in the Midwest (which led, over the next decades, to over 100,000 single women getting the chance to work and travel.) The Montezuma burned to the ground in early 1884, was rebuilt and burned down again in 1885, and then run with modest success by the railroad. But the Harvey company boldly expanded with the Santa Fe all over Arizona and California— and Albuquerque grew into its major hub in New Mexico. The coming of the Castañeda, which was built in 1898, represented the railroad reinvesting in Las Vegas. The hotel enjoyed heydays all through the early 1900s, when legendary chef Dan Tachet created his signature dish, Chicken Castañeda and introduced travelers to the tastes of the Southwest.
Early motion picture stars stopped there on the way to Hollywood starting in 1910 (Tom Mix and director Romaine Fielding even made some movies in Las Vegas). In the mid-1920s, Fred Harvey created its Southwest Detours—very popular train and car trips all over New Mexico and Arizona, to Native-American reservations and sites of great history or natural beauty. And the Castañeda became the gateway for travelers from the east headed to the Grand Canyon, where Fred Harvey also ran the hotels at the South Rim. Business was hurt by the Depression, then reinvigorated by the Second World War when Harvey hotels fed western train-traveling soldiers. But the hotel was closed by the railroad in 1948, not long after Harry Truman made a campaign stop there. The Castañeda then sat largely unused for nearly 70 years. In fact, the railroad originally sold it for salvage, and it was only kept from the wrecking ball when a local railroader bought it to convert part of it into apartments. While many of the famous Harvey trackside hotels closed at that same time—ironically, just after the 1946 release of the Oscar-winning film about them, “The Harvey Girls,” starring Judy Garland—Las Vegas had the distinction of being home to two of the oldest, most architecturally and culturally significant, and most endangered of the grand old buildings. The Montezuma had been barely utilized since the early 1900s (when Teddy Roosevelt was President, the railroad tried to convince the government to take it for free as a military health retreat; they wouldn’t.) Then in 2001, the Montezuma was saved and gorgeously restored as the cornerstone of the U.S. campus of United World College. That made the situation with the Castañeda even more painful. It was just sitting there, sad and lonely, next to the railroad tracks, a hulking structure with broken out windows, a leaky roof, and a bar that was open only when the quirky longtime owner felt like it. That’s what the hotel looked like when my wife, Diane, and I first came to visit Las Vegas in 2005, as I started researching a biography of Fred Harvey and his multigenerational family business. Wherever we went in town, we were told that Las Vegans were livid over the condition of the old building, and that its owner—who still lived there and sometimes rented out other rooms as apartments—was asking so much for it that it would never be sold and saved. When the book, Appetite for America: Fred Harvey and the Business of Civilizing the Wild West — One Meal at a Time was finished, I came to Las Vegas on tour. The very first question I was asked concerned the Castañeda. Did I know anything new about its possible restoration? Was there anything I could do to convince the owner to sell it? And was there anything I could do to convince that couple in Winslow Arizona who had per-
formed a miracle restoration of the Harvey hotel there to come do the same in San Miguel County? It turned out I did know that couple, Allan Affeldt and Tina Mion, but not well. My wife and I had stayed in their magical hotel in Winslow, one of the greatest achievements of Fred Harvey design guru Mary Colter. After my book came out in 2010, we got to know the couple better, along with what turned out to be a surprising number of people fascinated with Fred Harvey-related history and SW travel. There were, at that time, Arizona Harvey enthusiasts—who stayed at La Posada (which had a fourstar restaurant, the Turquoise Room, and its own Harvey Girl re-enactors) and the Harvey hotels at Grand Canyon South Rim, and researched at the
A cover of the 1909 Santa Fe Railway pamphlet describing Fred Harvey hotels, dining rooms, and sample menus
Heard Museum in Phoenix, which held the company’s amazing Native American art collection and business records, and NAU Cline Library Special Collections. And then there were New Mexico Harvey enthusiasts, most congregating around La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe (where concierge Steve Wimmer dispensed Harvey history gossip) and the restored Belen train station. Albuquerque was still mourning the destruction, in 1970, of its grand Harvey hotel, the Alvarado, and the train station right next to it. They were separated, in the day, by the Harvey “Indian Room” where its native art collection was displayed and sold, and where Colter got her start.
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