VEGAS MYTHS BUSTED: This Sign Welcomes Visitors to Las Vegas, New Mexico
Posted on: December 8, 2025, 07:21h.
Last updated on: December 8, 2025, 03:34h.
- While it’s better known than its predecessor, Las Vegas, Nev., isn’t the first town to carry that moniker
- Las Vegas, NM, came first — in 1835
- But though the small New Mexican hamlet got thoroughly overshadowed by the other Las Vegas by 1945, the welcome sign currently featuring on social media is a fake
New Mexico also has a city named Las Vegas, though what happens there really stays there — unless you also type “NM” into your “Las Vegas” Google search.
This northern New Mexico hamlet — situated between the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains — is home to several historic hotels, a museum, and an airport of its own, and about 13K other people who call themselves Las Vegans.
One thing Las Vegas, NM, doesn’t have is the welcome sign that’s been plastered across social media for the past couple of years. That was somebody’s idea of an AI-rendered joke. (It’s based on a 1953 Warner Bros. Looney Tunes short called “Bully for Bugs,” in which Bugs Bunny says, “Gee, must’ve taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque.”)
“OMG…is this real?” asked a member of one of several Las Vegas, Nev. Facebook groups to which the “photo” has been posted.
“I have seen that sign and it’s real,” confirmed another member of the group.
Viva Las Other Vegas
The last thing New Mexican Las Vegans find funny are jokes about being confused with the “real” Las Vegas.
For 80 years, they’ve had to put up with digs about which casino they live near and the common misdelivery of mail.
By the way, did you read the AI-rendered sign illustrating this story carefully enough to notice that it actually begins: “Welcome to Welcome…”? (Some human jobs are still safe … at least for a few more weeks.)
Original Sin City
The subject is particularly sore because New Mexico’s Las Vegas used to be the real one … from its 1835 founding as a major stop on the Santa Fe Trail … through the arrival of its railroad 26 years before Nevada’s Las Vegas got the one that made it a teeny town … all the way up to 1945.
That’s when the Hoover Dam-sparked expansion of Nevada’s Las Vegas met up with the contraction of New Mexico’s due to the 1908 Belen Cutoff diversion of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad around the old northern route through the town.
The population of Las Vegas, NM hasn’t increased since.
New Mexico’s Sin City was also the first to serve as a world-famous haven for criminal activity. In 1879, gunslinger Doc Holliday owned a saloon adjacent to the brothels on Center Street, and outlaw Jesse James rolled through town twice.
During one of these visits, James allegedly met Billy the Kid at a defunct hotel called the Old Adobe. (James considered relocating his train-robbing operation to New Mexico from Missouri, but it never happened.)
Vegas, New Mexico, Baby!
Las Vegas, NM, even has its own connections to pop culture and the casino industry.
Its Strip, Grand Avenue, gave birth to the Maloof dynasty that founded Las Vegas, Nev.’s Palms casino hotel in 2001.
Early last century, Joseph George Maloof opened a general store in town after resettling there from Lebanon. The money earned from this store led to a Pabst beer distributorship, which led to a Coors distributorship, both in New Mexico, which eventually led to the Sacramento Kings and “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”
When Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda got arrested for “parading without a permit” in 1969’s “Easy Rider,” it was filmed on Bridge Street. More recently, the Coen brothers shot 2007’s “No Country for Old Men” almost entirely around town.
And stars didn’t always leave after their films wrapped. Patrick Swayze fell so in love with the city while making 1984’s “Red Dawn,” he bought a 7,000-acre ranch about 15 miles north of town. (His ashes were reportedly scattered there after he lost his battle with pancreatic cancer in 2009.)
The late Val Kilmer also lived on a ranch about 25 miles west of town from the 1990s until he sold it in 2011.
If all this doesn’t make you reconsider Las Vegas, NM as worthy of more than overlooking or mocking, consider this…
Everyone who visits this Las Vegas at least gets to leave with their shirt.
Look for “Vegas Myths Busted” every Monday on Casino.org. To read previously busted Vegas myths, visit VegasMythsBusted.com. Got a suggestion for a Vegas myth that needs busting? Email corey@casino.org.
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