THE SANTA FE ROUTE. 69 
Las Vegas (vay’gas) is a railway division point where all the trains 
stop, most of them for meals at the Castafieda (cas-tahn-yay’da), 
a hotel named for the young soldier who accompanied 
Las Vegas. Coronado’s expedition and wrote the narrative of it. 
Elevation 6,384 feet. The Santa Fe Railway reached Las Vegas in 1879 
scan chy we miles, PUt continued building rapidly to the south. The 
portion of Las Vegas near the railway is relatively 
modern; the “old town,’ or original Mexican settlement on the Santa 
Fe Trail, is some distance west of the station. The name is Spanish 
for the meadows. On the flat roof of a building in Las Vegas Gen. 
Kearney stood in 1846 to administer to the Mexican citizens the 
oath of allegiance to the United States. Five years before that 
the plaza of Las Vegas was the scene of a great celebration over the 
surrender of the various detachments of Texans who had entered 
New Mexico to induce the inhabitants to join the Texas Republic. 
Gallinas Creek, which flows through Las Vegas, is a small stream 
draining a portion of the east slope of the Rocky Mountains. Gagings 
by the United States Geological Survey have shown that its aver- 
age flow is about 23 second-feet. The water is utilized for irrigation. 
A branch railway goes northwestward from Las Vegas, 6 miles to 
the Montezuma Hot Springs in a gap in the foothills where there is a 
large hotel and sanitarium that, in recent years, has not been open. 
Most of Las Vegas is built on the Greenhorn limestone, and this 
formation also crops out extensively in the high bluff just east of the 
railway station, where all its beds may be seen. At the base, near 
the stream, is the underlying Graneros shale, pesene upward by a 
few feet of transition beds into the Greenhorn ‘limes e. This ime- 
stone presents its usual characteristic features oF an alternation of 
many thin beds of nearly pure limestone and dark shale. In some 
of the shale and in a few beds of the limestone there are abundant 
impressions of the characteristic fossil Inoceramus labiatus, a mollusk 
‘with oval shell somewhat similar to the oyster. The thickness of the 
Greenhorn limestone in these exposures is fully 100 feet, and the top 
of the formation constitutes a mesa extending some distance east to 
low hills of Carlile shale which rise above it.’ 
gas, and especially in the canyon near the 
hot spr’ ngs, are extensive outcrops of the 
succession of rocks underlying the Green- 
1 A short distance north of Las Vegas 
the Greenhorn limestone passes under the 
Carlile shale, a formation which carries 
numerous round concretions in its upper 
portion. Thisisoverlain by a thick body 
of shale representing the Niobrara group 
and Pierre shale and occupying a basin 
which pitches to the north and the beds 
wre formation, ‘‘Red Beds” of Tri- 
c and Carboniferous age, and older 
Carboniferous Hineetones, all —- 
+hoa orpat 
distance ‘went of Las Ve- 
nearly 
mass of granites and schists of the main 
Rocky Mountain uphi 
