St. James Hotel, Cimarron, New Mexico. At this time Elizabethtown, Cimarron, and much of the surrounding was owned by Lucien B. Maxwell. The Maxwell Land Grant was the largest land grant ever made in the United States. When Maxwell sold the grant in 1870, the new Land Grant Company men discovered that the French chef, Henry Lambert, was working in Elizabethtown and enticed him to come to Cimarron. Photo by Kathy Weiser-Alexander.