LAS VEGAS, N.M. (KRQE) – An old stadium, once popular for horse shows in the City of Las Vegas, New Mexico, has sat empty for decades. Now, a land grant committee is looking to bring new life to the old facility.
“It really fell out of place around 1985,” said Edward Sena, President of the Board of Trustees for the Las Vegas Land Grant. “People started illegally dumping trash here and using this as a dump site.”
The Norman L. King Memorial Stadium has a strong history in the town after it was built during the 1930s as a public works project through the “New Deal.” It was a way to improve the city’s economy by providing work to the local population. It also hosted one of the city’s biggest attractions, “The Reunion Association,” which is a 3-day rodeo combined with a reunion of Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.
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“It used to hold horse shows back in the ’30s and ’40s,” Sena explained. “Actually, it was also a place where vendors could come and have shops around here and sell animals, food.”
The Board of Trustees for the Las Vegas Land Grant, who is behind the effort to revamp the stadium, said they requested $100,000 from the legislature to begin planning and designing the facility, but the price tag to complete the project is in the millions.
The board said the stadium could be used for concerts, school events such as graduations, and religious events. Once complete, they would like to use revenue from the project to restore another building in town, the Department of Veteran’s Affairs building. Sena said it would be restored to serve as an emergency shelter to house people during natural disasters, such as the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon wildfire, as well as a place to provide services to veterans.
“What we want them to do is to come in and have a place, a couple of rooms for themselves, whether that’s two or three veterans at a time, and really work through their problems,” Sena added.
The area is expected to be fenced off until the project is complete.
