Mission:

The mission of the Cimarron Chamber of Commerce is to promote economic prosperity by connecting local business with the community so our commerce and our community will prosper.

History:

The history of Cimarron is rich and interesting, and visitors can still enjoy it today! Several buildings and sites stand as a testament to the town's wilder days. A "Historic Walking Tour of Old Town" Cimarron includes a look at the old jail, stage office, St. James Hotel, and more. In all there are 14 historic sites dating back to the mid 1800s.

One mile south of Highway 64 on State Road 21 lies the Historic District of the Village of Cimarron. Park near the St. James Hotel (No. 7 on the green pamphlet) and enjoy the self-guided walking tour of Old Town. It takes 30-60 minutes to see the 14 historic sites marked in front by stone pedestals; most can be reached by car. The green pamphlet gives more information than fits onto the brass plaque mounted atop each pedestal. The yellow pamphlet presents a brief history of the Village and provides background information on the historic sites, including the Santa Fe Trail, Lucien Maxwell and his 1,713,000-acre Land Grant, and the Colfax County War.

The Santa Fe Trail consisted of two main branches: the original route called the Mountain Branch, which passed through Cimarron, and the Cimarron Cutoff, named for the town near Dodge City, Kansas. The route of the Mountain Branch follows present-day I-25 over Raton Pass (along the railroad tracks) and parallels Hwy 64 to Cimarron, crossing in front of the Visitor Center and across the Cimarron River to Old Town. The two branches met at Fort Union, 90 miles south of Cimarron and the main fort offering protection for travelers along the Trail.

In the early 1920s, Waite Phillips, of the Phillips 66 Oil Company, began purchasing large tracts of land west and south of Cimarron. By the mid-1930s he had acquired over 300,000 acres and named the ranch Philmont. About 1940 he donated half the land to the Boy Scouts of America to be used as a working ranch as well as a high adventure base for Scouts. The headquarters of the Ranch is located four miles south of Cimarron on SR 21 and houses the Philmont Museum and Seton Library, which also serves as Philmont’s Visitor Center. Nearby is the magnificent Villa Philmonte, built by Phillips in the late 1920s; tours may be arranged at the Philmont Museum.

Eleven miles south of Cimarron on SR 21 lies the site of Rayado and a reconstruction of Kit Carson’s hacienda. Carson and Maxwell initially chose to settle along Rayado Creek in the late 1840s and helped man an army post there attached to Fort Union. In the mid-1850s they decided that the site of present-day Cimarron was a better location to start a town, probably because the Cimarron River was more reliable than the Rayado. Carson’s hacienda is open from early June through mid-August and rests on property owned by the Scout Ranch. An historic chapel sits across the road in a stand of trees.