Reviewed by Josh N · Updated August 27, 2026 · How we verify
Reported Phenomena
- Ghost
- Former owner apparition
Reported by visitors & local legend. Stories, not verified claims.
The haunted Plaza Hotel stands on the north side of the old town plaza in Las Vegas, New Mexico, a three-story brick block with an Italianate facade that has been trading on the same corner since 1882. Its reputation among ghost hunters rests on a single name: Byron T. Mills, a former owner whose ghost is said to haunt the building and whose initials are still over the door of the lobby bar. That is the extent of the documented folklore. The history behind it, on the other hand, runs deep, and it is the better reason to walk through the door.
Quick Facts About the Plaza Hotel
- Opened in 1882 as an upmarket hotel for a boom town whose population had reached six thousand
- Built by a group of businessmen led by Don Benigno Romero, with local merchant Carlos Blanchard among the partners
- Construction cost $25,000; advertised as the finest hotel in the territory and nicknamed the “Belle of the Southwest”
- Restored in 1982 with thirty six guest rooms; an adjoining building later added another thirty five rooms and 3,100 square feet of meeting and banquet space
- Listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a contributing property in the Las Vegas Plaza historic district
Why a Wagon Yard Became the Belle of the Southwest
Las Vegas was founded in the 1830s and stayed small and quiet for decades. The plaza itself was originally an area where wagons were parked. In 1846, during the Mexican American War, Stephen W. Kearny stood on that plaza and proclaimed that New Mexico was part of the United States.
What changed the town was track. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway arrived in 1879, with a station a mile east of the plaza, and the settlement expanded fast. In 1880, after a campaign by the local newspaper, The Las Vegas Optic, a public subscription converted the wagon ground into a park: trees planted, a bandstand built, a picket fence run around the edge. Two years later the Plaza Hotel went up facing it.
The building was grandly finished for its moment and place. Guest rooms had high ceilings. Towering twin staircases connected the lobby to the second floor. The first floor balcony carried ornate iron railings, since removed. In 1883 Charles Ilfeld opened his Great Emporium, a three-story department store, next door, and for the next thirty years the plaza was the commercial center of the region. Among the hotel’s early tenants was the former outlaw Dick Liddil, who sold his saloon in West Las Vegas in 1885 and leased the Plaza’s bar and billiard room.
The One Lung Club and the Invalid Guests of the 1890s
The Plaza was the leading hotel in town until the late 1890s, when the Santa Fe Railroad built the luxurious La Castaneda a short distance away and handed it to Fred Harvey to run as part of the Harvey House chain. By the end of that decade Las Vegas rivaled Denver, El Paso and Tucson in importance.
It also drew the sick. The dry climate attracted invalids with pulmonary ailments, tuberculosis above all, for which no other cure was then known, and by the 1890s many of the Plaza’s guests were convalescent tuberculosis patients. The hotel became enough of a sanatorium by default that the One Lung Club was organized there in the 1890s, providing social activities for the invalids that did not require exertion. No ghost story in circulation attaches to those guests, but anyone who likes their haunted hotels with a body count should know that this one spent a decade housing the dying.
Rough Riders, Roosevelt and the Hotel Romaine
The first reunion of Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders was held at the Plaza Hotel in 1899. Roosevelt stayed at the hotel twice and announced his presidential candidacy from Las Vegas.
Hollywood came next. The hotel was used in many cowboy films, including Tom Mix westerns. From 1913 to 1915 the silent film director and actor Romaine Fielding leased the entire building and renamed it the Hotel Romaine; traces of that name can still be picked out on the brick facade. Fielding’s first Las Vegas picture was The Rattlesnake, a story about two rivals in love, and four more shorts followed within the month. His five-reel thriller The Golden God employed about 5,000 local extras and staged a cavalry and artillery charge through the streets of the old town. The print burned in a fire and no copies survive. Much later, several scenes of the 2007 film No Country for Old Men were shot at the Plaza.
Mama Lucy’s Restaurant and the Highlands Students
Between the grand years and the restoration, the Plaza had a plainer working life. Mrs. Lucy Lopez, known to friends as Mama Lucy, ran the Plaza Hotel Restaurant and Bar for fourteen years with her husband. They rented part of the hotel as a dormitory for New Mexico Highlands University students and sold meal tickets as an alternative to the university cafeteria, with daily lunch and dinner going for $30 a month. Students short of money could make a special arrangement in exchange for helping out.
New owners restored the hotel in 1982, producing thirty six guest rooms and a fine dining room. The adjoining Ilfeld building was purchased later and converted; those rooms are more modern than the older part of the hotel, which holds its comfy luster. In March 2014 it was reported that the entrepreneur Allan Affeldt was investigating a purchase of the hotel from the Valley National Bank in Espanola, which held an outstanding $3.7 million note on the property, and that he was also looking at buying and restoring the Plaza’s vacant former rival, the Castaneda.
Byron T. Mills, the Ghost Behind the Bar Name
Here is where record ends and story begins. By 2006 the hotel had a restaurant and a lobby bar called Byron T’s, named for a former owner, Byron T. Mills. The bar carries his name because his ghost is said to haunt the building.
That is the claim, and it is worth being precise about what it is and is not. There is no documented incident, no verified death in a particular room, no named witness in the historical record supporting it. What exists is a persistent local attribution: guests and staff associate the building with Mills, and the hotel has leaned into that association firmly enough to put his initials on the bar. Treat it as folklore attached to an old and much-altered building rather than as evidence. A structure of this age, with twin staircases, a nineteenth-century brick shell and a modern wing grafted on, produces its own noises without help.
Staying at the Plaza Hotel on the Old Town Plaza
This is a working hotel, not a museum or a ticketed attraction, so the way to see it is to book a room or a table. The older section, dating to 1882, is the part with the period character; the Ilfeld rooms are newer and more conventional. The lobby, the twin staircases and Byron T’s bar are all accessible to anyone who comes in for a drink or a meal.
The setting is half the visit. The hotel faces the plaza park laid out by public subscription in 1880, and the whole square is a National Register historic district, so the walk around the block is part of the experience. The Castaneda, the Harvey House rival that eclipsed the Plaza in the 1890s, sits nearby to the east near the old railway station and is worth pairing with a stop here for anyone tracing how the railroad reshaped this town.
See Plaza Hotel for Yourself
Sources
- Hispanic Spaces, Latino Places: Community and Cultural Diversity in Contemporary America
- The woman behind 'Mama Lucy'
- historic-hotels.com
- NPGallery Asset Detail (National Park Service)
- Why Communication Skills Are Key to Revolutionizing Online Learning in New Zealand
- Wikipedia: Plaza Hotel (Las Vegas, New Mexico)
Address: 230 Plaza St
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Plaza Hotel located?
Plaza Hotel is located at 230 Plaza St.
Can you visit Plaza Hotel?
Plaza Hotel is a place where you can stay overnight. Always follow posted rules and respect private property.
Reader sightings
Nobody has reported anything here yet. If you have been, you would be the first.
Report your own visit to Belle of the Southwest: The Haunted Plaza Hotel, Las Vegas NM
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