The town of Lamy, NM is about 18 miles from Santa Fe by rail. There's no Amtrak stop in SF so people disembark the train in Lamy and hitch a ride to town. In 1928, a cowboy in an open-top touring car was the main transportation (see Remembering Santa Fe, Will Clark, 1990).
Lamy is not lively like Madrid, Cerrillos, or even, for god's sake, Golden. But it's pretty. The depot was constructed in 1880 and got a facelift in 1909 so it would resemble the Santa Fe depot.
As for the town's namesake, Jean-Baptiste Lamy arrived in Santa Fe in 1851 (in 1875 he became Archbishop-boss of Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico). Th subject of Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather, probably the most celebrated Southwestern novel, he established the local hospital, St. Vincent's. He also established Loretto Academy and St. Michael's, still a well-regarded local private school, and began building the cathedral at the east end of the SF plaza. No Spanish influence, though, for he liked the Romanesque style, being a Frenchman himself. This desire to put up a French cathedral in a Spanish town horrified many of the writers and artists who moved here in the 1920s. While others fretted, Lamy built a private retreat north of Santa Fe, a nice place to wait while the church was built.
