Formerly: Lambert's Place · Lambert's Inn · Express St. James Hotel
Cimarron, New Mexico · Founded 1872 · Building: 1872, expanded into a two-story hotel circa 1880–1882
A reopened Cimarron Santa Fe Trail hotel founded as Henri Lambert's 1872 saloon, famous for its visible ceiling bullet holes and heavily disputed ghost lore.
The St. James Hotel began as Henri Lambert's Cimarron saloon in 1872 and grew into a two-story adobe hotel by the early 1880s. The National Park Service recognizes it as a Santa Fe Trail site connected to New Mexico's ranching, land-grant, and outlaw-era history, while its dining-room ceiling still shows visible bullet holes. The hotel closed in September 2024, was sold, and was reported to have reopened under new ownership in December 2024.
Henri Lambert established a saloon in Cimarron along the Santa Fe Trail route. The National Park Service identifies Lambert as a former personal chef to President Abraham Lincoln.
Source: National Park Service, "St. James (Don Diego) Hotel, Cimarron," January 26, 2023; New Mexico Magazine, "An Ode to the St. James Hotel," October 2, 2024
By about 1880–1882, Lambert had expanded the saloon into a two-story adobe hotel with guest rooms and restaurant service. Sources vary slightly on the exact year of the hotel expansion.
Source: National Park Service, "St. James (Don Diego) Hotel, Cimarron"; City of Dust, "We'll Shoot the Lights Out For You," June 26, 2011; New Mexico Nomad, "St. James Hotel | Cimarron"
When Lambert's sons replaced the roof, later histories say they found hundreds of holes in the roof structure and added a double layer of wood between floors. Visible bullet holes remain in the former saloon area, now associated with the dining room.
Source: New Mexico Nomad, "St. James Hotel | Cimarron"; City of Dust, "The St. James Hotel, Cimarron, New Mexico"; Questa News, "Historic St. James Hotel in Cimarron Closes its Doors," September 30, 2024
The St. James Hotel became associated with the National Register of Historic Places and the Cimarron Historic District. The exact listing type and date require direct National Register record review.
Source: National Park Service, "St. James (Don Diego) Hotel, Cimarron"; New Mexico Nomad, "St. James Hotel | Cimarron"
Express UU Bar Ranch, part of Express Ranches, purchased the St. James Hotel.
Source: St. James Hotel historical summaries; Wikipedia historical compilation, requiring deed-level verification
The St. James Hotel announced it would close, and New Mexico reporting described the historic hotel as closed and listed for sale.
Source: KRQE, "This historic Wild West-era hotel is closing its doors in New Mexico," September 4, 2024; New Mexico Magazine, "An Ode to the St. James Hotel," October 2, 2024
Historical summaries report that the hotel and restaurant reopened under new owners after the late-2024 sale. The current ownership entity and ongoing operating status require direct confirmation.
Source: Legends of America, "Haunted St. James Hotel in Cimarron, New Mexico," November 2024 update; St. James Hotel historical compilation, requiring current operator verification
A 2026 lodging listing describes the St. James Hotel as accepting guests in Cimarron. A current official hotel site, reservation system, lodging license, and operator should be confirmed before relying on current-service details.
Source: Mountain Vacation Properties, "St. James Hotel in Cimarron, NM," January 16, 2026
Every claim gets rated. A business's own website can never earn "documented."
The National Park Service identifies Henri Lambert as having been President Abraham Lincoln's personal chef before he established a Cimarron saloon in 1872. This supports the historical biographical connection, though the review did not inspect White House payrolls, memoirs, or contemporary Washington records.
Visible bullet holes in the former saloon/dining-room ceiling are supported by the National Park Service and multiple historical accounts. But published counts vary: some accounts say 22, the candidate says 26, and later stories say more than 400 holes were found in the roof during 1901 repairs. No physical survey or primary incident record was reviewed to establish an exact present count or prove the source and date of every hole.
The Room 18 legend says Thomas James Wright won the hotel in a poker game and was shot while returning to his room. But a 2021 historical review reports that Wright checked into the St. James in 1880 and appears in the 1920 federal census in Albuquerque, contradicting the claimed 1881 death. The supposed murder should not be presented as documented history or used as evidence for a haunting.
The St. James has a longstanding modern haunted reputation built around Room 18, Mary Lambert, alleged apparitions, and other stories. A documented historical building and visible bullet holes establish that the location has a dramatic past; they do not establish paranormal activity. This review did not identify a reliable earliest published source for the haunting reputation.
The property has a historic hospitality lineage from Henri Lambert's 1872 saloon and early-1880s hotel expansion, but it closed in September 2024 before being reportedly sold and reopened in December. That documented operating interruption prevents any literal continuous-operation claim through the present.
The National Park Service links the St. James to a long list of notable Western figures, and hotel histories repeat guest-list claims. However, the original guest registers from the earliest period are reportedly missing, while later lists are reconstructed from copies. This review did not inspect dated registers, letters, newspapers, travel records, or other primary proof for individual guests, so the list should be treated as tradition rather than verified fact.
That a crew visited and filmed is usually easy to verify. What they claim to have captured is a separate, and usually lower-rated, claim.
The candidate supplied a 2009 episode title, season, and air date, but this review did not verify them through an official Travel Channel, Discovery, production, or episode database. The St. James is often associated with paranormal television, but no production record should be stated as fact until the series, episode, filming location, date, and episode content are independently checked.
A fan-maintained Unsolved Mysteries page links the hotel to an older paranormal case file, but this review did not verify a series episode, air date, segment credits, production synopsis, or the candidate's October 30, 1991 claim through official program records. Even if a segment existed, it would document that a show repeated the story, not prove the alleged murder or haunting.
Everything below has been reported by two or more independent sources — this is an informational record of what's said about this place, not a verified account of paranormal activity. Still Open America doesn't certify hauntings as real.
Staff, guests, and haunted-place accounts describe Room 18 as the hotel's most active and hostile room. Reports include banging, footsteps, unexplained noises, cold sensations, and a male presence, and the room has long been described as padlocked and unavailable to overnight guests.
The hostile Room 18 presence is traditionally identified as T.J. Wright, said in the legend to have been shot after a poker game and to have died in the room. The attribution is a recurring part of the hotel folklore, though historical research contradicts the claimed death at the hotel.
Cody Polston's historical review reports that T.J. Wright appeared in the 1920 federal census in Albuquerque, contradicting the story that he died at the St. James in the early 1880s.
Guests and staff have reported a female apparition and a protective female presence in Room 17 and the upstairs halls, traditionally identified as Mary Lambert. The reported activity includes a transparent woman in the corridor and movement or tapping near the room's window and lampshade.
The sudden smell of rose-scented perfume in Room 17 and nearby halls is repeatedly reported as Mary Lambert's signature activity. Accounts say the fragrance appears and disappears without an obvious source.
Multiple accounts describe cold spots and the smell of cigar smoke in the second-floor hallway despite smoking being prohibited. The reports are not consistently attributed to one named figure and are treated as a broader upstairs activity pattern.
A former owner reported seeing a cowboy standing behind or reflected in the mirror at the bar before the figure vanished. Later accounts repeat the bar-area apparition as part of the hotel's broader cowboy and gambler folklore.
Hotel lore includes a smaller mischievous presence called the Imp, reported to move through the building apart from the Room 18 and Mary Lambert stories. Accounts characterize it as an unidentified resident spirit rather than a historically documented person.
No historical identity or documented connection to the hotel could be confirmed for the alleged presence called the Imp.
The St. James Hotel has exactly 26 proven nineteenth-century gunfight bullet holes in its dining-room ceiling.
The St. James has visible bullet holes in the former saloon/dining-room ceiling, but published counts differ. Some accounts say 22, others say 26, and historical retellings describe hundreds of roof holes found during 1901 repairs. The precise number, age, and origin of each surviving hole have not been established by a reviewed physical survey.
Source: National Park Service, "St. James (Don Diego) Hotel, Cimarron"; Legends of America; New Mexico Nomad; Questa News
T.J. Wright was murdered in Room 18 after winning the St. James Hotel in a poker game.
The Room 18 legend is contradicted by a historical review reporting that T.J. Wright appeared in the 1920 federal census in Albuquerque after his supposed 1881 death. The story should be treated as folklore, not an established murder record or evidence of a haunting.
Source: Cody Polston, "Why T.J. Wright, the ghost of Room 18, cannot be haunting the St. James Hotel," November 8, 2021
The St. James Hotel has operated continuously since 1872.
The hotel has a hospitality lineage from Henri Lambert's 1872 saloon, but it closed in September 2024. A later 2024 report said it was sold and reopened in December, creating a documented interruption in the operating record.
Source: KRQE, September 4, 2024; New Mexico Magazine, October 2, 2024; Legends of America, November 2024 update
Ghost Adventures season 2 episode 9 and Unsolved Mysteries season 4 episode 7 definitively documented St. James Hotel hauntings.
The candidate's specific television episode claims were not verified through authoritative production or episode records. A television feature, if verified, would establish that a program filmed or aired a segment—not that historical murders or paranormal activity occurred.
Source: No independently verified official episode guide or production record located in this review
The St. James survived because it became a container for Western mythology as well as a place to sleep and eat. Its Santa Fe Trail setting, Henri Lambert's unusual biography, the bullet-scarred ceiling, and decades of stories about gamblers, outlaws, and ghosts created a powerful heritage identity. But the 2024 closure showed that fame does not guarantee financial continuity; its survival now depends on the new owners maintaining an active hotel operation while separating documented history from the legends that sell the experience.
Henri Lambert opened a Cimarron saloon in 1872, and the business expanded into the two-story St. James Hotel by about 1880–1882. The National Park Service identifies Lambert as a former personal chef to President Abraham Lincoln and recognizes the hotel as a Santa Fe Trail landmark. The property closed in September 2024 and was reportedly sold and reopened under new ownership in December 2024, so its hospitality history is long but not uninterrupted.
The St. James Hotel is one of New Mexico's best-known nineteenth-century frontier hotels, with a hospitality lineage beginning in 1872. This review does not establish it as New Mexico's oldest hotel because no statewide comparison of rival properties has been completed, and the hotel had a documented closure in late 2024. Its historical importance is clear without assigning an unsupported oldest-title claim.
Yes, the former saloon ceiling—now associated with the dining room—has visible bullet holes, and the National Park Service identifies them as part of the hotel's historic character. The exact number is not settled: some accounts say 22, while others give 26 or recount hundreds of roof holes found during 1901 repairs. No survey reviewed here proves the precise present-day count or confirms the source of each individual hole.
The famous Room 18 story says T.J. Wright was shot after winning the hotel in a poker game, but the claim is contradicted by later census evidence. A 2021 review reports that Wright was a St. James guest in 1880 and appears in the 1920 census in Albuquerque, making the alleged 1881 hotel death impossible. The Room 18 ghost story is folklore, not verified history.
This review did not identify a reliable earliest newspaper, archival, oral-history, or historical-book source for the St. James Hotel's haunted reputation. Modern accounts center on Room 18, T.J. Wright, Mary Lambert, and unexplained activity, but their publication history has not been established. The earliest verified fact in this review is the hotel's documented historical reputation as a violent frontier site, not a documented date for its ghost stories.
The St. James Hotel closed in September 2024 but was reportedly sold and reopened under new ownership on December 20, 2024. A 2026 lodging listing describes it as accepting guests, but this review did not verify a current official booking site, lodging license, restaurant status, or active operator. Confirm directly before making travel plans.
617 S Collison Ave, Cimarron, NM 87714
None on file
The hotel reportedly reopened under new ownership after a late-2024 closure, but current lodging, restaurant, tour, and reservation details were not independently verified. Confirm directly with a current operator before traveling to Cimarron.