Check before you drive out. After 152 years, this hotel is closing.
KOB in New Mexico reported that the St. James in Cimarron, which served Billy the Kid, Jesse James and Wyatt Earp, is closing. Whatever the current position by the time you read this, confirm it before planning a stay, because a 152-year run ending is exactly the kind of change a map like this gets wrong.
What is ending is remarkable. The St. James was built in 1872 by Henri Lambert, who had been personal chef to Abraham Lincoln, on the recommendation of President Ulysses S. Grant. Lambert had gone west to Elizabethtown, New Mexico, hoping to strike it rich, found little gold, and opened a restaurant and saloon instead. Elizabethtown, Cimarron and much of the country around them belonged to Lucien B. Maxwell as part of the enormous Maxwell Land Grant, and Maxwell persuaded Lambert to move to Cimarron, where he founded the Lambert Inn. It was renamed the St. James later.
In its day it drew famous lawmen and notorious outlaws, and it was the scene of many killings. Two local sayings survive from that period. One was that it appeared Lambert had himself another man for breakfast. The other was the usual morning question around Cimarron: who was killed at Lambert's last night?
Wyatt Earp, his brother Morgan and their wives stayed here on the way to Tombstone. Jesse James always took Room 14. Buffalo Bill Cody stayed too.
It is on the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Cimarron Historic District.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
