By S. Derrickson Moore
Originally Posted on the Las Cruces Sun-News: 12/21/2014 01:00:00 AM MST
LAS CRUCES >> It’s a short stretch of road that encompasses a lot of our town’s history.
Las Cruces Ave. stretches from North Hermosa St. to North Mesilla St., and in about 1.5 miles, runs from the new (the city’s Meerscheidt Recreation Center and a complex that includes a skate park, playing fields and the ultra-modern Las Cruces Aquatic Center) to the old. In fact, the renovated Santa Fe Railroad depot, now the Las Cruces Railroad Museum, is the route’s raison d’etre, its very reason for being.
It was once called Depot Street. It was our first paved street, according to the city museums’ historical website, and it led new arrivals into town from the territory’s first railroad station.
After then-bustling Mesilla refused the opportunity, fledgling Las Cruces stepped up to donate land to the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad for a depot. After the first train pulled into the station in April, 1881, Las Cruces quickly became the fastest growing and most prosperous town in the territory.
You can see echoes of that heydey in the residential neighborhood as you head east from the depot past grand old homes, including some on state historic registries that surround Pioneer Women’s park.
Perhaps the grandest of the group is the Frenger-Schlothauer adobe mansion that was the obsession of Clara Frenger, an artistic soul who transformed a classic Victorian home, built on four city lots in 1887. Inspired by old adobes on Santa Fe’s Canyon Road, she recruited generations of craftsmen from Mexico and the Borderlands, and spent decades realizing her visions to create what came to be known as “La Fantacia,” at the corner of Las Cruces Ave. and Alameda Ave.
Right across Alameda is another new addition, the two-story Las Cruces Sun-News building, built after a 2011 fire destroyed the sprawling old brick behemoth that was the newspaper’s home for decades, taking over from an old grocery store.
Stroll by Central Elementary School, offices, and the Las Cruces Convention & Visitor’s Bureau, and you’ll pass the beginnings of two of the most interesting blocks on what was once the Downtown Mall: on the south, you’ll find Bank of the West, the St. Genevieve’s monument, the Rio Grande Theatre and the Southwest Environmental Center.
The block to the north houses two more theaters (Black Box and Las Cruces Community Theatre) and Coas Bookstore, Main Street Gallery and Patina Home, among other interesting emporiums.
Head east, and you’ll pass Rosie’s Café, the post office, the picturesque El Calvario Methodist Church and an adobe strip that houses everything from a barbershop and tattoo parlor to art galleries.
The old Las Cruces City Hall seems a bit forlorn without its stone lions, which have moved to the city’s new governmental headquarters nearby.
“It’s interesting that after almost 12 years there, I’m not as attached to that building as I was to the older city hall before it, at that same location,” said former Las Cruces Mayor Ruben Smith.
“I have a photo of myself when I was about 3 in front of the old, old city hall, when everything was in one area: government, the police and fire departments. I think some of us have stronger sentiments about other buildings we’ve worked to preserve: the Branigan Cultural Center, the W.I.A. Building, Court Junior High, Central Elementary and the old railroad station,” Smith said.
Before reaching the avenue’s next major thoroughfare, Solano Drive, you’ll walk through a motley residential area that includes some of the town’s historic original townsite areas, including the Mesquite Historic District and what was once El Camino Real, the royal route that colonists and conquistadors followed from Mexico City to Santa Fe.
It’s a street where you can go to school, to church, shop at a variety of stores, exercise and play games, enjoy fellowship and community events at St. Genevieve’s Parish Hall, and maybe even pay respects to a dear departed friend or ancestor at San José and St. Joseph cemeteries.
Old-timers and their descendants will recognize and have tales to tell about the streets Las Cruces Avenue intersects: Campo, San Pedro, Mesquite, Tornillo, Manzanita, Esperanza, Almendra, Espina, Martinez, Virginia, Santa Fe. There are vivid family stories embedded in local consciousness. Just ask.
And it’s clear that love has been lavished on residential homes in the area. Look carefully and you’ll see a lot of creativity: a rose-trimmed, bright-pink adobe; pretty landscaped courtyards; old growth trees and interesting doors and gates.
It’s a walk through our city’s history that also illustrates what is in many ways a graceful juxtaposition between the old and the new. Across the street from the Railroad Museum, now decorated for a Victorian-era holiday celebration, you’ll find a renovated adobe that houses SunTech, a solar energy firm.
“We need to preserve it as much as we can with what we have right now, without doing any more destruction,” said Smith, who feels that the downtown area is looking better these days.
“A lot has been done but in some ways, the work is just beginning,” Smith said.