Ghost Towns of Route 66 (15 page)

The cab of a vintage Chevy truck, framed by a quintessential prairie landscape, appears as an old workhorse out to pasture in Endee.

San Jon's Western Motel is now quiet, its neon forever darkened, and most who pass by don't give it a second glance.

DON'T MISS

At exit 369 on Interstate 40, on the site of the second Texas Longhorn Motel and Café, is a new travel plaza and automobile museum that captures the essence of the old road. Appropriately, this full-service facility sits on the post-1954 alignment of Route 66.

MONTOYA, NEWKIRK, CUERVO

W
EST OF
T
UCUMCARI,
the landscape is more of the quintessential type associated with the desert southwest. The ghost towns on this stretch of old Route 66 are haunting, empty places that reflect the vast, lonely landscape that embraces them.

The windswept cemetery in Montoya, founded as a loading point for the railroad in 1902, enhances the forlorn feeling that gives those unfamiliar with the empty places of the southwest an involuntary shudder. In this little town, the mesquite and juniper now crowd Richardson's Store. The mercantile added Sinclair gasoline at some point between the day it opened in 1925 and its closure in the mid-1970s, and it fades closer to oblivion with the passing of each year.

The towering Casa Alta, built of cut stone blocks, is often mistaken for an old store. Built shortly after the town's founding, the home of Sylvan and Maria Hendren is now succumbing to more than half a century of abandonment to the elements and vandals.

Newkirk, originally Conant, to the west of Montoya, also dates to the first years of the twentieth century. The town grew slowly in the years before the designation of Route 66, but the stream of money that resulted from that event flowed east and west in Fords and DeSotos, Packards and Studebakers. By the mid-1930s, there were four service stations, restaurants, De Baca's Trading Post, and a few cabins.

Cuervo, as a town, dates to the construction of a railroad siding here in 1901 and the establishment of a post office in 1902, but settlement predates this by several years. As with its neighbors to the east, the town never progressed much beyond being a supply center for area ranches and, after 1926, a stop for travelers on Route 66.

Rittenhouse notes that the 1940 census counted a town population of 128. When he drove through, there were “a few gas stations, groceries, no café, garage, or other tourist accommodations.”

The bisection of Cuervo by Interstate 40 proved a boon and bane for the old town. It provided a reprieve from the complete abandonment neighboring towns experienced, but it devastated the businesses associated with the era of the old two-lane highway.

The vestiges on the south of the interstate highway, including the shell of a schoolhouse built of cut stone and a similarly constructed church, clearly predate the establishment of Route 66 in 1926. Those that remain on the north side mostly date to the postwar era.

The howling winds of winter and the warm breezes of summer are slowly transforming plastered adobe walls into sand as Montoya fades away.

A chainlink fence and boarded windows may protect Richardson's Store in Montoya from vandals, but the winds of change are still taking their toll.

Take exit 321 on Interstate 40 and continue west through the narrow, low tunnel under the highway. This section of the highway ends at exit 291 in Cuervo.

For Newkirk, a ranching and railroad town turned service center, the bypass of Route 66 proved to be the town's obituary.

Like a skiff cast adrift on copper seas, a relic from Detroit floats under boundless skies.

GHOSTS OF THE SANTA FE TRAIL

B
EFORE 1937, THE ROAD
from Santa Rosa to Albuquerque was a 132-mile loop that followed the storied Santa Fe Trail into Santa Fe and then the historic El Camino Real down the steep switchback curves of La Bajada Hill into Albuquerque. Often overlooked even by fans of legendary Route 66, this portion of the highway is, arguably, one of the most scenic—and its ghost towns are counted among the oldest.

Quiet little Dillia (called El Vado de Juan Paiz before 1900) predates Route 66 by almost a century. The old church, an empty garage, and the adobe homes melting back into the soil reflect this long history.

Founded in 1880, Romeroville is accessed by following a rutted dirt road from U.S. Highway 84, the modern incarnation of Route 66 in this portion of New Mexico. The town is the namesake of Don Trinidad Romero, the congressional delegate for the New Mexico Territory and a colorful, larger-than-life character who successfully bridged two cultures.

The ruins in El Vado de Juan Paiz, now Dillia, reflect a ranching and farming history that predates Route 66 by almost a century.

With the speed of a glacier, nature reclaims the land in Dillia, bypassed in the 1937 realignment.