Raton Downtown Historic District
New Mexico
In 1914 the largest hotel in New Mexico stood on a corner in Raton, with four hundred rooms.
The Seaburg European Hotel opened in 1914 on North Third Street, and when it was built it was the largest hotel in New Mexico. Four hundred rooms. It still stands, under a different name, as the El Portal. Raton's downtown holds about two hundred acres and ninety-five buildings the National Register considers significant, and the hotels alone tell you what the railroad did to this town. The Palace went up in 1896. The Foote in 1901. The Haven in 1913. Another one, built in 1929 at Second and Rio Grande, was called the Swastika Hotel. It is a bank now. Coors put up a brick warehouse here in 1906. The oldest house in the district is the Labadie House, from 1880, sitting on Savage Avenue. Across the street from it is a two acre park named for a president of the Santa Fe Railroad, and in that park sits a piece of the wreck of the USS Maine.
This is the first of 2 parts. The rest runs about 2 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.
When this hotel was built, it was the largest hotel in New Mexico with 400 rooms.
Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Nearby, on the same roads
- Sugarite Canyon State Park 4.4 mi A coal town of nearly a thousand people stood in this canyon, and now a hiking trail runs through its ruins.
- Morley, Colorado 9.8 mi A demolition crew leveled an entire Colorado town but refused to touch the church, and its bell tower is still standing.
- Drop City 22.5 mi The domes here were built from the chopped-off roofs of cars.
- Capulin Volcano National Monument 27.2 mi When Capulin erupted, the lava didn't come out the top — it leaked out a weak spot at the base called the boca.
- Ludlow Massacre 31.4 mi Detectives hired by the coal company built an armored car with a machine gun on it and called it the Death Special.