Glamour of Las Vegas, NM lies in its Western roots

The 1924 Reunion

Two months before the centennial revival of the Las Vegas Cowboys’ Reunion, organizer Ron Querry quit worrying about reaching his goal of 100 horses to participate in a nonmotorized parade through the city’s business district and plaza. “As of this afternoon,” he said in early June less than 60 days prior to the Aug. 1 parade, “we’re at 94 horses, four mules and 18 wagons. And I think we might get a lot more.” At the parade’s end will be a mule-drawn manure spreader, a rolling collection point for equine droppings scooped up by volunteer Boy Scouts stationed along the route. Then, imagine a similar parade during the second Cowboys’ Reunion in 1916 when cowboys showed up with 500 horses to form a parade more than a mile long. Century-old photographs and memorabilia about the old-time reunions will be on display through Sept. 15 in the library gallery at New Mexico Highlands University. Western roots run deep in Las Vegas, N.M., a community that should never be confused with its gambling cousin in Nevada. In summer 2015, this town is sizzling with activities and a new promotional logo: “New Adventures Down Old Trails.” After an absence of 48 years, town boosters are reviving the Las Vegas Cowboys’ Reunion just in time for its centennial celebration. The Cowboys’ Reunion week activities, set for Aug. 1-9, will coincide with the well-established Heritage Week activities sponsored by the Citizens’ Committee for Historic Preservation. There is something for everyone – book signings and lectures, ranch tours, music festivals, rodeo, cowboy cook-offs, home and garden tours, theatrical (and melodrama) productions, film lectures, and a peek at ongoing renovation at the 1898 La Castañeda Hotel, one of Fred Harvey’s famed Harvey Houses...more