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Mesilla is only 15 or 20 minutes drive from my condo and when you get there, it's like being suddenly in another country or in another epoch. When the plaza is empty, I like to sit on a bench or inside the gazebo looking at the old church and playing lazy, sometimes I bring a book to read. Around the plaza, there are some interesting shops that sell souvenirs or Indian jewelry, it's fun to check them. Some of the buildings where the shops are, have been standing in the same place for the last 400 years at least. If you get hungry, some of the best restaurants in Las Cruces are precisely located there.
I remember back in the day my dad taking all of our family to the La Posta restaurant (Mexican food) every so often as it had a great feel and atmosphere to it as it was like you traveled back to the 1880's. It supposedly has a ghost in it .
I remember back in the day my dad taking all of our family to the La Posta restaurant (Mexican food) every so often as it had a great feel and atmosphere to it as it was like you traveled back to the 1880's. It supposedly has a ghost in it .
It seems every place in Las Cruces and El Paso and in between has ghosts.
It's pretty fun, ask the waiters -- especially if they are older hispanics about the ghosts that abides in their restaurant and they'll tell you the best ghost stories. They seem to always get pretty acquainted with their ghosts and the ghosts aren't too terrible.
It seems every place in Las Cruces and El Paso and in between has ghosts.
It's pretty fun, ask the waiters -- especially if they are older hispanics about the ghosts that abides in their restaurant and they'll tell you the best ghost stories. They seem to always get pretty acquainted with their ghosts and the ghosts aren't too terrible.
I'm sure your correct about alot of the old buildings having their ghost tales .
It was several years back on either the Discover Channel or National Geographic channel that i was watching a show about ''The Ghosts of New Mexico'' and so they featured the St. James Hotel in Cimmarron, A place in Santa Fe (forgot the name), The Lodge Hotel up in Cloudcroft and the La Posta restaurant in Mesilla as it was kinda cool to listen to some of the employees talk about their experience with the apparition there .
One minor correction from a Mesilla resident:
Mesilla as a town is only about 160/70 years old, though it certainly looks much older in some cases. The "little table-land", a relatively high spot along the Rio Grande, was a jacal, a camp and resting place with more-or-less temporary structures, if any, along the Camino Reale for many centuries. But it didn't have permanent residents in permanent structures until sometime around 1848.
After the Mexican-American war the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo gave land east of the Rio Grande to the US, while the land in S. NM west of the river was still Mexico. A priest led a group of settlers who didn't want to be in the USA, from Dona Ana, a town on the newly Americanized side, to the current site of Mesilla, where they were joined by others of similar opinion.
Later, there was a flood and when the river went down it had changed course and put Mesilla on the east side and in the US of A...thus proving that God does have a sense of humor.
The Gadsden purchase, or Tratado de Mesilla as it's still known in Mexico, was done soon afterward and the official hand-over of the territory took place in the Mesilla plaza on Nov. 16, 1854. The gazebo in the town plaza commemorates this.
Most of the old town is a designated historic district, with strict rules about how a structure can look, right down to colors. I can't paint my front door without a building permit, but I don't mind as long as these regulations preserve and protect this special place. Most of the Plaza area is on the Nat'l Register of Historic Places.
Floods, wars, Apaches, Billy the Kid, Confederate invasion...on and on...there's so much cool history here. The big ghost story is at the Double Eagle, but the whole town has a spirit and atmosphere that allows the mind to wander back in time.
A link to Mesilla... Mesilla, New Mexico, USA
Thank you TECPATL for the enlightment, however Mesilla does look much older than the XIX Century, I'm glad they have strict rules to keep it looking old, because the town is like a symbol of a past era. The ghosts are probably many centuries older, because they didn't require that Mesilla became an official U.S. town in order to exist. Of course, the legal resident status of these ghosts might be questioned.
This is a wonderful thread. I have not had time to visit this site for a while. My husband and I are having a home built in LC right now. It should be finished in June but we won't be moving for a couple of years. I retire in two and he wants to work another year after that. But we will be coming out often. In fact we will be there next week to finalize some choices and see the progress, then again a month later. We will drive out in August to bring some things and stay in our new home for the first time.
I agree with all the positives. The air does feel like velvet on the skin, the sky is bluer, maybe because of the dry air, the colors on the Organs are stunning. I think the town seems much smaller than 90,000. We went all over NM before choosing LC. Everywhere else we liked was too big, too expensive, or too cold even though we enjoy all of the other towns immensely, living there in reality is different. LC was just right.
Like some of you, we always spend time in Old Mesilla each visit. We have hiked on both sides of the Organs and we have also driven through the Gila Wilderness area and been to many of the other areas around like T or C, Cloudcroft, Ruidoso, The Bosque preserve during the crane festival, White Sands, etc. There is still so much to do that I have not had time to experience yet. And I want to do all of the above again! I am sure that won't be a problem since I have a feeling we will have lots of visitors. Our friends and family are already lining up!
I get a very good vibe the moment we come into town or even in the state in general.
I am a musician and teach and chair a music dept. at a community college so having NMSU was also a selling point for me. I love all kinds of music so I look forward to some of the cultural fare. The art and culture are wonderful and you can find enough places to eat. I am looking forward to cooking in my own kitchen and BBQing on the back portal for a change while gazing at the Organs. I look forward to learning more about New Mexican cooking since I love to cook.
Thanks for all the enjoyable comments.
I've been told by a couple different students of Mesilla history that the building that is at the core of the Double Eagle restaurant is the oldest building in town. Of course, in the 1840's nobody was keeping much in the way of records, especially given La Mesilla's somewhat chaotic transition from being in Mexico to being in the USA. The old Frietze store near the Post Office, now headquarters for the border book festival, is also very old The oldest fired brick building in New Mexico is across the plaza, the Maurin (sp?) building, built in 1863.
I posted most of these in the Las Cruces pics thread. Views of a quiet morning in Mesilla
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Another LC fan and future resident
Late April Morning in Mesilla Plaza
