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Jacob Romero sits on the broken and overgrown platform seating area of the old Norman L. King Memorial Stadium, a New Deal-era public works project that has since fallen into disrepair in Las Vegas, earlier this year. Romero said he had not sat in the seats of the stone amphitheater and looked upon the stadium since he was in junior high school. Gabriela Campos/The New Mexican

LAS VEGAS, N.M. — Norman L. King Memorial Stadium was bigger than Jacob Romero remembered when he visited the historic stadium in early August for the first time since junior high.

As a kid, he said, he used to go there to watch mud bogging, a type of off-road motorsport where drivers race their vehicles through a mud pit or track.

The area hasn’t changed much, he said, except for the overgrown grasses. But the stone amphitheater remains, like a relic of the Roman Empire.

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A view of the stone seating of the stadium. A 1990 registration form with the National Register of Historic Places lists the diameter of the stadium as 270 feet. Typical of WPA projects, the registration form stated, the arena was constructed largely with local materials including native stone.

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Jacob Romero looks back at the path that leads to the stairs of the Norman L. King Memorial Stadium in Las Vegas. King Stadium was completed in 1936 with Works Progress Administration labor and an approximately $47,000 grant. It was named for Norman King, a “beloved citizen of ·è¿ÍÖ±²¥ Fe for many years and a great and devoted soldier,†according to a ·è¿ÍÖ±²¥ Fe New Mexican story in 1935.

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Jacob Romero walks out into the field, now empty and overgrown, where events and performances once took place at the old King Stadium in Las Vegas on Aug. 4, 2024.

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Jacob Romero looks over the old King Stadium in Las Vegas while recalling his time attending events at the stadium in his youth.



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