ABOUT ROYAL MASTODON SOCIETY

Royal Mastodon Society is located on Bridge Street in the Historic Old Town area of Las Vegas, New Mexico. This is not the bling Las Vegas that one is perpetually leaving. This is the authentic Las Vegas: a three-college town 45-minutes east of Santa Fe; the southeastern point of a spectacular loop to Taos along the east side of the Sangre de Christo mountains; an impressive collection of architectural gems nestled between the tail-end of the Rockies and the western edge of the Great Plains. Settled in 1835, Las Vegas was a key stop on the historic Santa Fe Trail, a hard-core wild west town, home to America's most notorious gun-slinging outlaws, and a gritty backdrop for numerous films including Easy Rider and most recently, the Academy Award-winning film, No Country for Old Men.

Las Vegas has also inspired work by many artists and photographers including photo essays by Wim Wenders and Michael Eastman. Its rennovated historic train station offloads travelers from downtown LA to the west, and downtown Chicago to the east.

This is fitting, because the Las Vegas region has long served as a gateway between east and west, a densely layered locus for generations of people in motion: Apache and Comanche nomads, French fur trappers, Spanish conquistadors, pioneers migrating westward, fevered gold miners, outlaws on the run, east coast merchants, Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders, Hollywood film crews, bikers on Harleys, Europeans in search of the authentic Wild West, and creative professionals in the midst of urban flight.

Royal Mastodon Society is housed in a stone structure that was originally a mercantile building (circa 1865), erected by an east-coast merchant named Winternitz. Over the years, it also served as a roller skating rink and parachute assembly plant, among other things. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it was most recently a Santa Fe Trail Interpretive Center. Phase II renovations are nearly complete, continuing and extending the amazing restoration work undertaken by the former owners, the Citizen's Committee for Historic Preservation.

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