Location Description and History

Way back in 1882, Las Vegas was rapidly becoming one of the West's leading commercial centers. Las Vegas' Old Town Plaza had been the center of the young town's commercial activity for Santa Fe Trail mercantile pioneers like Mr. Charles Ilfeld and Don Benigno Romero. The arrival of the AT&SF railroad in 1879 had fueled additional economic growth. To meet the demands of the burgeoning retail/trade center, Romero and Jean Pendaries raised the $25,000 needed to build the Plaza Hotel, the "Belle of the Southwest". New management took over the hotel in 1886 and business was brisk. Many prominent political and business organizations made the Plaza Hotel their meeting place, including such groups as the New Mexico Medical Society, the New Mexico Cattle Growers' Association and the Territorial Democrats and Territorial Republicans.

Notorious characters of the Old West who frequented the Las Vegas Plaza included Big Nose Kate, Doc Holliday, and Voodoo Brown. Pat Garrett once caused a commotion transporting a shackled Billy the Kid by wagon across the Plaza toward the Las Vegas jail for a temporary stay.

The year 1900 brought the Plaza's Victorian era to a close as a railroad strike coupled with depressed economic conditions curtailed many of the local and territorial activities that made the Plaza Hotel famous.
Soon, however, the silent film era of the early 20th century brought another wave of prosperity to Las Vegas and the Plaza Hotel. In 1913, the popular film director/actor, Romaine Fielding leased the entire Plaza Hotel for use as his Lubin Film Company filming and studio headquarters. The Plaza Hotel was renamed "Hotel Romaine" during his extended (five-months) stay. Though the paint is now faded on the brick, then name "Hotel Romaine" is still visible on the hotel's west facade!

Beginning in 1915, Tom Mix, one of the country's most famous cowboy actors, enjoyed the hospitality of the Plaza, and took full advantage of the remaining vestiges of the Wild West found nearby. Many scenes from Mix's movies were filmed in and around Las Vegas, and shots of the Plaza were incorporated into several episodes.

Near the middle of the twentieth-century, one owner of the Plaza Hotel, Byron T. Mills, was apparently ambivalent about the property. At one point he announced his plan to demolish the hotel, going so far as to sell some of its furnishings and fixtures. For reasons unknown, Mills did not carry through with the demolition. Today, the hotel's saloon bears his name and it's reported that the long-departed, guilt-ridden owner occasionally revisits the hotel in spirit after nightfall!

For the next several decades the popularity of the hotel waned. Mrs. Lucy Lopez, better known as "Mama Lucy," a local entrepreneur with considerable interest in northern New Mexico politics, caused resurgence in popularity in the late 1960's. Her Plaza Hotel Coffee Shop became a hotbed of regional political organization, planning and change through the early 1970's.

In 1982 eighteen partners joined in the Plaza Partnership, Ltd. to rehabilitate the Plaza Hotel, which had fallen into a state of neglect. Careful research, architectural documentation and historical/cultural studies were conducted to assure the accuracy of the rehabilitation project. The reconstruction took thirteen months and approximately two million dollars to complete. The rehabilitated Plaza Hotel reopened on December 31, 1982.

History from http://www.plazahotel-nm.com/

A story from the Plaza Hotel

Lauren Addario doesn't spend a lot of time at the Plaza Hotel anymore. During the 1990s, she worked in the hotel restaurant, the Land Mark Grill, and her late husband worked in the property's maintenance department.
She still remembers the history of the Plaza - originally built in 1882; closed and reopened several times over the years; popular backdrop during silent movie era; and restored during the 1940s after its former owner, Byron T. Mills, died. She also remembers the ghost.
"I was willing to dismiss it at first," Addario said of her 1997 experience. "But a woman stayed in the same room a year later and described the same experience."
It was during the winter of that year, and Addario and her late husband were staying in room 316 of the hotel. Her husband was on call for heating problems, and he was out of the room during an early morning issue with the furnace.

"A little while after he left, I heard the door open, and I felt someone sit on the edge of the bed," Addario recalled, thinking it was her husband returning to the room. "But something seemed askew, and I felt the bed release like someone got up. ?Then, I heard someone pacing at the foot of the bed. Whatever this was, I felt the bed depress and then release again." Addario now was nervous and agitated because she knew it wasn't her husband. It was someone - or something - else. She didn't' want to reach across for the phone because whoever was in the room was between her and the phone.

"I was afraid to move,"she said. So she lay there for about two hours until the sun came up, her husband returned and the noises stopped.
Initially, she chalked it up to a dream that seemed real and told no one of her experience until a year later when a hotel guest reported a similar occurrence. That's when she stepped forward with her tale of the supernatural.
"Oh, that's just Byron T.," came the response from a coworker.
Mills, whose name adorns the Plaza Hotel's bar, owned the property in the 1940s until his death in 1947. His death put an end to the sad era for the hotel, during which much of the furnishings were sold, and the property was used as a dormitory for university students. Mills was apparently making plans to demolish the building.
Because Mills died at the Elks Lodge in town, no one really knows why Byron T. keeps coming back to the Plaza Hotel. Some say he feels guilty about the way he treated the Plaza, and he's looking for redemption. Over the years, numerous hotel guests have reported eerie visitors in the middle of the night, and Byron T.'s Saloon workers still hear footsteps and smell cigar smoke after hours in the empty bar.

Story from http://www.fabuloustravel.com/

We arrived at the hotel around 3:00pm. After checking into our rooms, we talked to the hotel's staff. From the stories of their encounters the second and third floors seem to be the most active although we were advised to search the tunnels underneath the hotel in the basement.

At 7:30pm, we started searching the third floor. The hotel has many strong AC electromagnetic fields due to the aged electrical wiring. However there very very strong DC fields in between the staircases on the third floor. The fields would appear for about 30 seconds then vanish for several minutes before reappearing. We attempted to locate a mundane source for these fields under the stairs and surrounding areas but were unable to locate anything that would produce a DC electromagnetic field. The space weather that evening was unsettled, but there was not enough activity to explain the high readings we got on the Trifield. Still we suspect a mundane source for these readings due to the systematic appearance of the DC fields.

We then moved to the new conference room where a single EM hit of 4nt with a frequency of 22 Hz was located. After searching the room for 30 minutes without any noteworthy incidents, we began the initial search of the tunnels underneath the hotel. The basic story of the tunnels is mentioned below;

Secretly led by a man named by Vicente Silva, a respected saloon owner of the Imperial Saloon, the group was called the Silva's White Caps, or Forty Bandits; or sometimes, the Society of Bandits. Often meeting in Silva's saloon, the gang held the area in a virtual stranglehold until October, 1892. At this time the Las Vegas citizens hanged a fellow gang member named Pat Maes. Soon thereafter the bandit group gradually disintegrated. Silva was eventually murdered by former members of his gang and was buried at Camp de lost Cadillos on May 19, 1895. the Tunnels are believed to originated from the Imperial saloon and had several exits through the city's old quarter.

After initially finding nothing of interest, instrumentation wise, we head back up to the third floor. After another sweep, the Team was divided into two smaller teams. One returned to the tunnels to do some more audio recording, while the other continued searching the third floor.

It was during this third sweep of the third floor that two interesting pictures were taken with an IR modified camera (DSCF 901 and 903). The entire sequence from DSCF 900 to DSCF 904 are in the photo section below.

Photographs

Click on the thumbnails to view the larger image

	The Tunnels	Wendy and Jim in the tunnels	DSCF 900
DSCF 901	DSCF 902	DSCF 903	DSCF 904

DSCF 901 # Exposure Time (1 / Shutter Speed) = 10/600 second = 1/60 second = 0.01667 second # Lens F-Number/F-Stop = 290/100 = F2.9 # Exposure Program = normal program (2) # ISO Speed Ratings = 400 # Components Configuration = 0x01,0x02,0x03,0x00 / YCbCr # Compressed Bits per Pixel = 20/10 = 2 # Shutter Speed Value (APEX) = 600/100 Shutter Speed (Exposure Time) = 1/64 second # Aperture Value (APEX) = 310/100 Aperture = F2.93 # Brightness (APEX) = -83/100 Brightness = 0.56 foot-lambert # Exposure Bias (EV) = 0/100 = 0 # Max Aperture Value (APEX) = 310/100 = 3.1 Max Aperture = F2.93 # Metering Mode = pattern / multi-segment (5) # Light Source / White Balance = unknown (0) # Flash = Flash fired, compulsory flash mode # Focal Length = 880/100 mm = 8.8 mm

Spectrum and Thermal analysis

DSCF 903 # Exposure Time (1 / Shutter Speed) = 10/600 second = 1/60 second = 0.01667 second # Lens F-Number/F-Stop = 290/100 = F2.9 # Exposure Program = normal program (2) # ISO Speed Ratings = 400 # Components Configuration = 0x01,0x02,0x03,0x00 / YCbCr # Compressed Bits per Pixel = 20/10 = 2 # Shutter Speed Value (APEX) = 600/100 Shutter Speed (Exposure Time) = 1/64 second # Aperture Value (APEX) = 310/100 Aperture = F2.93 # Brightness (APEX) = -82/100 Brightness = 0.57 foot-lambert # Exposure Bias (EV) = 0/100 = 0 # Max Aperture Value (APEX) = 310/100 = 3.1 Max Aperture = F2.93 # Metering Mode = pattern / multi-segment (5) # Light Source / White Balance = unknown (0) # Flash = Flash fired, compulsory flash mode # Focal Length = 880/100 mm = 8.8 mm