Bad behavior: A couple of towns vie for the title of 'New Mexico's Wicked City'

About 145 years ago, a couple of New Mexico towns — Albuquerque and East Las Vegas/Las Vegas — vied for the unenviable label of New Mexico’s “Wicked City.”

It wasn’t really a contest, more one reporter’s conclusions based on his/her personal observations of the Wild West, according to historian Robert J. Tórrez.

The reporter was an unidentified special correspondent who had initially visited (new)East Las Vegas/(old)Las Vegas in the New Mexico Territory in 1879, about the time of the arrival of the railroad to town.

Apparently, the same correspondent returned to the territory in 1881, sniffing around Albuquerque, looking for legitimate malice.

Bad behavior: A couple of towns vie for the title of 'New Mexico's Wicked City'

The correspondent’s visits are recounted in Tórrez’s recent collection “New Mexico’s Wicked City & Other True Stories of New Mexico History.”

It’s his third collection of articles that originally appeared under his long-running monthly “Voices from the Past” byline.

Tórrez said the newspaper the Globe-Democrat published items by the correspondent on East Las Vegas/Las Vegas and Albuquerque just after the railroads arrived in those communities.

As for East Las Vegas, the correspondent marveled that just before the railroad’s arrival, grain was growing undisturbed in the town. Months later, more than 100 businesses were engaged “in every branch of trade known to civilization.”

The correspondent is quoted as saying that most of the businesses were of a type “known to barbarism.” The type that put the bar in barbarism, no doubt.

That was modified. Almost half of the businesses, the correspondent reported, were saloons or dance halls where people openly gambled.

The reporter-tourist also took time to describe the commerce, long lines of wagon trains, pulled by oxen teams, that showed up daily in Las Vegas — not East Las Vegas — from all parts of the territory and from Mexico. They were hauling in wool, hides, pelts, copper and other precious metals. They left town with “all the products of civilization.” None was named, except for a goodly amount of St. Louis beer.

Tórrez quotes the correspondent as stating that despite Las Vegas’ sleepy appearance, there were frequent “sensations” — lynchings on the plaza, shootings and stage robberies. Tórrez also said the correspondent reported that travelers going from one town to the next were robbed of their belongings when commanded “hands up.”

The same reporter-tourist who wrote about East Las Vegas/Las Vegas may be the same person who penned an article about Albuquerque two years later. This 1881 article originally appeared in the Washington Star and was reprinted in the St. Louis Daily Globe-Democrat, Tórrez writes.

Though the reporter-tourist said Albuquerque was a town of some importance, it nevertheless was wicked.

Supposedly, the wickedness claim was because the town “openly advertised” keno, faro and “high ball” as their most popular forms of entertainment. And the phrase “Hands up” could be heard in the Duke City.

Albuquerque is the subject of the photograph on the front cover of Tórrez’s third collection. It shows two men in the foreground and the burgeoning Duke City down the road, in the background. There does not appear to be any visible wickedness occurring when the photo was taken, unless the men were secretly plotting where to play their next game of gin rummy or at which tavern to buy their next root beer.

Curiously, Tórrez writes at the end of his article that the 19th century reporter-tourist revealed having his own vice: He “freely” sampled the local wine, which he found of high quality and reasonably priced at $1.50 per gallon. It’s unstated how much he drank.

The third volume of Tórrez’s columns is divided into three sections — “Glimpses of Spanish and Mexican-Era New Mexico,” “People, Places & Events of Territorial New Mexico” and “Law and Disorder in Territorial New Mexico.”

These are some of the other subjects of those columns: “El Camino Real,” “A Massacre at Rio Abajo,” “Santa Fe’s 1832 Municipal Regulations,” “The Fourth of July in New Mexico,” “The Humble Jacal,” “New Mexico’s Pueblos 1864,” “Legal Hanging Number 52,” “New Mexico’s First Penitentiary” and “A Great Escape.”

Tórrez, an Albuquerque resident, was the New Mexico state historian from 1987 until his retirement in 2000.