New Mexico - the Land of Enchantment

So my friend and I took our daughters on a road trip for Spring Break and we decided to go to New Mexico. We stayed at the historic Eklund Hotel & Saloon the first night and then traveled on toward Taos.

Part way there, we came upon an adorable little town called Cimarron and decided to look around. There was a storm coming in and the locals told us we really should just stay there and not try to make it to Taos because the storms in the mountains can be pretty treacherous. We had no idea where we were really and then we saw a sign that said:

Now, the St. James Hotel has quite a haunting history. There are 26 documented deaths at the hotel and it was a wild and rowdy saloon of the true Wild West. We had no idea where this place was and we certainly had no idea we would run across it on our adventure. Both of us being ghost hunters thought it was pretty cool that we found it totally by accident. I was also excited to learn that Wyatt Earp, who my youngest child is named after (that's right, wanna make something of it? Wyatt Earp was a badass and "Doc" is not a good name for a child), stayed there on his way to Tombstone. We checked in and then spent the rest of the day wandering around Cimarron soaking up the Wild West history. We ended up at the Cimarron Cemetery and it was fascinating. It was obviously very old. There were three guys there with all kinds of camera equipment and we figured they were ghost hunters, too, but it turned out they were filming a documentary about the St. James and they were doing a segment on the ghost stories and asked if we'd be interested in making some comments for it, so we said sure. We found the headstone for Davey Crockett's nephew, who was gunned down at the St. James.


That evening, it turned out that our room was directly across from the bar, so we decided to have a few cold beers. While we were in there, we watched the video of the stories about the St. James. And then we met Duane.


Duane was a Cimarron local and he knew all the stories and apparently spent a lot of time in the St. James and had played the cowboy ghost in the video we had watched about the hotel. He was the real deal cowboy that worked on a ranch. He was there with his friend, Gary, and they asked the bartender if they could take us up to the poker room. They said yes, so off we went to the room where many a gun was drawn and even where the hotel was lost in a poker game to a TJ Wright. Wright was shot to death shortly after winning the hotel and he is said to haunt Room 18. It's locked and they won't let anyone in, not even staff. We tried. They won't budge. We did wander up there and knock on the door and just as I knocked, the clock chimed and we went running down the hall like scared little girls. It was quite comical. Anyway - back to the poker room. We went in and sat down and played a few hands of poker until the bartender came up and said it was closing time, so we went on to our room for the night. But not before Duane told us to go check out the hanging tree. He said it wasn't included in any of the historical stuff or the tours or anything and not everyone even knew about it, but that there was a hanging tree with a foundation built around it and steps leading up to it. He said we would have to get permission to get on the land where it grew and he told us where it was located. The next morning, we drove to where he told us and lo and behold, we saw it and there was woman outside that agreed to let us in the fence to get a closer look:

We headed on to Taos. The mountains were glorious and we got stuck in a crazy hail storm and witnessed lots of snow on the top of the mountains at Eagle's Nest. Taos was nice and we went to lots of neat little shops and ate at Michael's Kitchen which makes the biggest cinammon rolls I have ever seen. After a day full of driving in the mountains and shopping, we headed back to Clayton and stayed at the Eklund again and headed back home the next morning. It was a great trip and our kids will remember it forever. We're planning a ghost hunting trip back to the St. James sometime around the end of May.