Lunch in Lamy

It's pronounced LAHmee. I've heard Laymie, and La-MEY and La-MEE but those aren't right. It's a tiny town in New Mexico, population just a few hundred people. It is named for Bishop Lamy, who was the first Archbishop of Santa Fe in the 1800s. Willa Cather's book Death Comes for The Archbishop was about him.

The only thing in Lamy is a train station. That's it. There is the station, a train history museum, a newly opened cafe in an old mercantile building across the street, and in the station itself there is a tiny taproom reputed to serve craft beers and great sandwiches.

Housebound and restless this winter, we took a drive one day to Lamy for lunch at the taproom. It wasn't open. The train history museum wasn't open either, and the the cafe across the street was closed. Other than that, we had a nice outing.

The waiting room and ticket counter were open. Lamy is now an Amtrak stop that has two trains a day, one eastbound and the other westbound. The station was originally built for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. As I have mentioned before, the famous railroad -- longest in the world in its time -- never stopped in Santa Fe on its way from Chicago to L.A. It bears the name Santa Fe, but never got there.

Instead it ran 18 miles south of the city. The rail line followed the old Santa Fe Trail, but building tracks through the rugged mountain passes over those 18 miles of trail was too difficult, so they bypassed the city, built a stop at Lamy and called it close enough.

With everything closed up, we never had lunch in Lamy. We never got into the museum. We got mud on our shoes from the dirt parking lot.

Despite no lunch and nothing open, we did not come home hungry -- you can't starve in Santa Fe. Driving the 18 miles back to town, we passed cafes and eateries and stopped in one. We grumbled about our unproductive outing over a nice meal, and debated how to actually pronounce Lamy.

The next time you are traveling by rail from L.A. to Chicago, or the other way around, be sure to stop in Lamy. We heard the station sandwiches are very good.