The room in the Folsom Hotel where train robber Tom “Black Jack” Ketchum was held after his arrest in 1899. He was later convicted and hanged in Clayton. (Eddie Moore / Albuquerque Journal)
Copyright © 2021 Albuquerque Journal
FOLSOM, NM – As a little boy who grew up here, Matt Doherty said he may have broken into the abandoned Folsom Hotel and thrown stones at it, but now he lives and looks after it there.
Doherty bought the 1888 building in 2015. “I don’t know what to do with it, but the building is basically my main purpose,” said Doherty, an engineering graduate at the school. He’s also on the board of directors at the Folsom Museum right down the street.
He would like to remodel the building, but construction costs have skyrocketed.
Doherty, 38, has an apartment on the ground floor of the two-story rock building, but the five rooms upstairs look like they did 100 or more years ago.
A pronghorn antelope trophy and a stuffed golden eagle are located on a rock fireplace on the ground floor overlooking the lobby. Doherty points out an old bullet hole in one of the hotel’s wooden pillars.
Matt Doherty’s family has owned a ranch around the village of Folsom for generations. Doherty bought the historic Folsom Hotel and is trying to preserve the area’s history. (Eddie Moore / Albuquerque Journal)
The building was a general store from 1888 to 1911 when it became a hotel, according to Betty Griffin in her 1988 brochure The Folsom Hotel Story.
The late Griffin and her partner, the late sculptor Richard Jagoda, restored the hotel in the 1980s and were instrumental in getting it listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.
The hotel embodies the history of Folsom. The ghosts of Folsom’s past might well still be there. Doherty said he was scared one night when a Spanish lady appeared out of nowhere, only to disappear immediately.
Doherty is intimately familiar with the history of his property and has recently recounted some of the most colorful episodes the hotel has seen. Outlaw Thomas “Black Jack” Ketchum unknowingly left his mark on the hotel.
“Ketchum, when they robbed the train, when they shot him, they took him straight to the hotel, so his first night in jail was upstairs,” says Doherty.
“Black Jack was the leader of the most ruthless, daring, and murderous gang of desperados this country has ever known, operating in Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Utah and Arizona – the Hole-in-the-Wall . Gang ‘”, Griffin wrote in her notebook. On August 16, 1899, Ketchum attempted to rob the southbound Colorado and Southern train when it slowed for a horseshoe turn, as it had done twice before, but this time he operated alone.
A conductor hit “Black Jack” with a shotgun, but he was captured the next day and spent his first night in custody at the Folsom Hotel. His arm was amputated in Trinidad, Colorado, and he was sentenced in Santa Fe and hanged in Clayton on April 26, 1901.
Doherty told a different story about the hotel’s Bucket of Blood bar. “A kid was playing poker and eventually stole the cigar box full of money that was on the table, so they shot him and killed him and the sheriff was shot and died outside the bar,” Doherty said.
Griffin gives more details about the incident in the late 19th century in her brochure. “The owner of the saloon behind the Folsom Hotel left his play money and cards in a cigar box in a separate game room next to the bar,” she wrote. “When the gambler saw the man walking through the back door with his money box, the gambler took his shotgun from under the counter, ran to the back door and shot the thief as he was crossing the fence…. The player went over, got his money box and went back to his shop without looking at the thief. “
Black cowboy and former slave George McJunkin, whose discovery of the Folsom Points revolutionized archaeological theory, died at the hotel on January 21, 1922 when it had become a home for aging cowboys.
Artist Jagoda’s estate administrator called Doherty to ask if he wanted to buy the hotel, “and I went down and bought it right there,” Doherty said.
The hotel needs work and Doherty is not sure if it could become a hotel again at some point or maybe a starting point for horse rides.
