New Mexico

St. James Hotel

T.J. Wright won this hotel in a card game and mortally shot when he left the table in the early 19th century. The hotel is now some 130 plus years old. The gunslinger gambler crawled into room No. 18 and died although most believe he is still there. The last time we check, the hotel did not rent this room out.

The hotel sits just of the Santa Fe Trail in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. They display their old guest book to the page singed by R.H. Howard, the alias of Jesse James. Jess James came to the hotel and stayed with his brother Frank James.
Jesse was not the only notorious character to stay at the St. James.

The hotel, was a vital outpost of The Old Santa Fe Trail, Cimarron and linked to a veritable Who's Who of the early land grant settlers, ranchers and desperados. The cast of characters included such notables as settlers Lucien Maxwell and Carlos Beaubien, Buffalo Bill Cody and his cohort, Annie Oakley, Kit Carson, Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid and Blackjack Ketchum. The notorious gunman, Clay Allison, allegedly danced naked on the bar. The hotel no longer permits dancing naked on the bar, according to the management.

The twenty-six bullet holes in the tin ceiling of the dining speak to some of the many stories about the old St. James Hotel and one of the most prevalent of the happenings here is the smell of a rose-scented perfume, a scent favored by Mary Lambert who was the wife of the hotel founder, Henri Lambert.

The hotel was originally a saloon built in 1872 by Lambert who was President Lincoln’s personal chef during the Civil War but by 1880 the saloon warped into hotel. The bar tenders claim there is a ghost who plays tricks on them in the bar area and some visitors claim to have seen him. The dinning room of the hotel is the original saloon.

A visitor to the hotel talked about the time she first walked into the hotel after seeing it on television. She said she walked into a
place with l, 000 eyes watching her and as she approached Room 18, she felt the hair raising on the back of her neck. When she got back to her room, she found the door standing wide open and her husband recalled locking it. She felt someone or something was in the room and was letting them know that they were not alone.

Stepping into the hotel is like stepping into the past. The hotel has no air conditioners, phones or television in any of the rooms. New owners purchased the hotel in March of 2002 and working to renovate it, one room at a time. They added an annex for those who want the comfort of air-conditioning, phones and television.

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