The Deceptively Dangerous Road from Tucumcari to Glenrio, New Mexico
BY T. LINDSAY BAKER
PHOTOS BY AUTHOR UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED
PHOTOS BY AUTHOR UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED
First appeared in Route 66 New Mexico magazine (Vol. 31, No. 3)
When the U.S. Bureau of Roads in 1926 designated Route 66 connecting Chicago with Los Angeles, its path followed existing roadways. In the Midwest, some of these were long-standing thoroughfares that received county and state maintenance for years, but farther west this was not necessarily the case.
New Mexico had only been a state since 1912, and its young highway department struggled to maintain the responsibilities it had inherited from the preceding territorial engineer's office. Here roadways crossed long stretches of thinly inhabited areas. At the same time, the state's tax base was so limited that legislators in Santa Fe had to make difficult decisions on how to fund governmental operations fairly. The new state highway department struggled with a tiny budget, and its administrators were forced to conserve their meager resources everywhere they could. Often this resulted in road construction and maintenance in areas most distant from the state capital receiving the least support.
Only about 45 miles separate Tucumcari from Glenrio, on the Texas state line, but this distance presented subtle dangers that took the lives of dozens of travelers. It carried Highway 66 traffic across semiarid range land characterized by short grasses, scrub brush, scattered cactus, and few people. This was the last stretch of the Mother Road in New Mexico to be replaced by Interstate 40 in 1981. The holdup was due primarily to skillful and persistent delaying tactics by village businesspeople in San Jon, who sought to maintain the flow of customers in cars and trucks past the fronts of their cafes, garages,
The pathway connecting Tucumcari to Glenrio presented road builders with several geographical complications. The first and largest persistent obstacle was the near-complete lack of naturally occurring gravel as construction material in this area. The second impediment was one encountered across the arid and semiarid Southwest: The roadway intersected multiple "dry washes," drainages that filled with storm waters during occasional downpours. These "flash floods" not only impeded movement across low places but also frequently eroded away roads completely. The third difficulty took the form of a natural wet-weather "lake" that overflowed across the highway right-of-way on the immediate east side of Tucumcari. Some westbound motorists were bogged in the mud so deeply they had to hire farmers with horses and mules to extract them.
As travelers went east from Tucumcari, they gradually ascended from the shallow drainage of the Pecos River onto areas that in past millennia had eroded from the western edge of the Great Plains. The geological conditions here created surface layers of sand and caliche, a soft, crumbly chalk-like material best described as friable low-grade limestone. For all intents and purposes, this region completely lacked physical deposits of hard stone or gravel necessary for stable roadway foundations. Consequently the earthen roadbed below the driving surfaces through this forty-odd-mile stretch became soft and slippery during wet weather and unduly created choking clouds of dust for motorists when it was dry. The New Mexico Highway Department grappled with this problem until the 1950s when builders created an alternate alignment and brought in expensive gravel and crushed rock from farther afield.
New Mexico had only been a state since 1912, and its young highway department struggled to maintain the responsibilities it had inherited from the preceding territorial engineer's office. Here roadways crossed long stretches of thinly inhabited areas. At the same time, the state's tax base was so limited that legislators in Santa Fe had to make difficult decisions on how to fund governmental operations fairly. The new state highway department struggled with a tiny budget, and its administrators were forced to conserve their meager resources everywhere they could. Often this resulted in road construction and maintenance in areas most distant from the state capital receiving the least support.
Only about 45 miles separate Tucumcari from Glenrio, on the Texas state line, but this distance presented subtle dangers that took the lives of dozens of travelers. It carried Highway 66 traffic across semiarid range land characterized by short grasses, scrub brush, scattered cactus, and few people. This was the last stretch of the Mother Road in New Mexico to be replaced by Interstate 40 in 1981. The holdup was due primarily to skillful and persistent delaying tactics by village businesspeople in San Jon, who sought to maintain the flow of customers in cars and trucks past the fronts of their cafes, garages,
The pathway connecting Tucumcari to Glenrio presented road builders with several geographical complications. The first and largest persistent obstacle was the near-complete lack of naturally occurring gravel as construction material in this area. The second impediment was one encountered across the arid and semiarid Southwest: The roadway intersected multiple "dry washes," drainages that filled with storm waters during occasional downpours. These "flash floods" not only impeded movement across low places but also frequently eroded away roads completely. The third difficulty took the form of a natural wet-weather "lake" that overflowed across the highway right-of-way on the immediate east side of Tucumcari. Some westbound motorists were bogged in the mud so deeply they had to hire farmers with horses and mules to extract them.
As travelers went east from Tucumcari, they gradually ascended from the shallow drainage of the Pecos River onto areas that in past millennia had eroded from the western edge of the Great Plains. The geological conditions here created surface layers of sand and caliche, a soft, crumbly chalk-like material best described as friable low-grade limestone. For all intents and purposes, this region completely lacked physical deposits of hard stone or gravel necessary for stable roadway foundations. Consequently the earthen roadbed below the driving surfaces through this forty-odd-mile stretch became soft and slippery during wet weather and unduly created choking clouds of dust for motorists when it was dry. The New Mexico Highway Department grappled with this problem until the 1950s when builders created an alternate alignment and brought in expensive gravel and crushed rock from farther afield.
Left: The concrete New Mexico/Texas boundary marker adjacent to former U.S. Highway 66 in present-day Glenrio.
Center: The author's 1930 Ford station wagon westbound on the 1930s alignment of Highway 66 near Endee in 2017.
Right: The grated dirt road south from the former railroad crossing in Glenrio that carried Ozark Trail and later Highway 66 traffic until the way was realigned in 1928.
Center: The author's 1930 Ford station wagon westbound on the 1930s alignment of Highway 66 near Endee in 2017.
Right: The grated dirt road south from the former railroad crossing in Glenrio that carried Ozark Trail and later Highway 66 traffic until the way was realigned in 1928.
The semiarid range country between Tucumcari and Glenrio typically received only about 16 inches of rainfall annually.
Its main economic activity was ranching, though most of the time the area offered only inferior grazing. This meant that the land supported comparatively few cattle and even fewer people When motorists in this uninviting environment experienced mechanical problems or suffered accidents, there were few resident individuals to render aid.
On Nov. 9, 1933, unemployed Philadelphia journalist Frederick F. Hoerger hitchhiked east of Tucumcari on Highway 66 jotting down notes along the way. After working a few hours of manual labor, he noted, "After lunch, I walk out of town toward Texas... The terrain is leveling off into the essential characteristics attending the imposing plains... Windmills are now in evidence. They are kept turning steadily by the moderate wind, which is a little cold on the hands." He concluded his New Mexico notes by penning, "I hope this mild weather continues until I manage to advance beyond these great open spaces."
An unimproved trail connecting Tucumcari with Amarillo already existed well before Highway 66 received its numerical designation in 1926. The pathway, some parts of it marked as the Ozark Trail Highway, roughly paralleled the early-twentieth-century Rock Island Railroad, though its surface was mostly graded dirt. According to the 1924 Official Automobile Blue Book, a national road guide, the roadway generally passed eastward toward Glenrio a distance of 48.5 miles. (Along the way drivers passed through San Jon at 26.2 miles and Endee at 41.4 miles. The road remained north of the Rock Island Railroad tracks until it crossed to the south side just west of Endee and then proceeded to the Texas state line. There it turned north for four-tenths of a mile to enter Glenrio, where it recrossed the tracks and turned back east.)
In spring 1920, the primitive roadway to Glenrio was receiving some attention. The State Record in Santa Fe reported on May 7 that "A.D. Flemister is making splendid headway in placing the road between Glenrio and Endee in improved condition," a maintenance job at the time considered to have been the most extensive grading it had ever received. Flooding became a problem along the dry washes. Two weeks later the same paper reported that springtime cloudbursts badly flooded "many sections of the newly dragged road running out of Glenrio." By 1923 state politicians discussed using some of the proceeds from state highway bonds to improve the Tucumcari-Glenrio road, though seemingly little happened until after the 1926 official designation of the roadway as U.S. Highway 66.
During spring and summer 1928, New Mexico state highway engineers surveyed Highway 66 between Montoya and the Texas state line. They proposed realigning the existing way to eliminate its two grade crossings over the Rock Island tracks just west of Endee and Glenrio. In July the state advertised for bids for "oiling" the surface of the roadway from Glenrio westward 15 miles toward San Jon to "do away with the sand hazard between these two points." The plan was to use an asphaltic highway treatment developed in California, "which is a mixing of oil, gravel, sand, and binding material into something like a heavy syrup form, which is poured on the road and rolled until it becomes practically as durable as concrete." Even with the pavement, the roadway never had any shoulders, so it ended at the outer edges of the "hard surface."
The inherent problem of the 1928 and later surfacing efforts between Tucumcari and Glenrio was that the base beneath the treatment consisted only of the locally available sand and caliche. No matter how much petroleum or bitumen coating was layered on top, the inadequate foundations gave way beneath the weight of trucks and other motor vehicles.
Highway 66 in eastern New Mexico became the scene of repeated one-vehicle car accidents that occurred when drivers veered too near to the edge of the road or when the sand and caliche base beneath the blacktop loosened or sloughed off. The number of these accidents was only increased by the nationwide tendencies of some drivers to imbibe alcohol and/or to stay behind the wheel too long, become fatigued, and nod off to sleep. The following are just a few of the repeated instances.
Its main economic activity was ranching, though most of the time the area offered only inferior grazing. This meant that the land supported comparatively few cattle and even fewer people When motorists in this uninviting environment experienced mechanical problems or suffered accidents, there were few resident individuals to render aid.
On Nov. 9, 1933, unemployed Philadelphia journalist Frederick F. Hoerger hitchhiked east of Tucumcari on Highway 66 jotting down notes along the way. After working a few hours of manual labor, he noted, "After lunch, I walk out of town toward Texas... The terrain is leveling off into the essential characteristics attending the imposing plains... Windmills are now in evidence. They are kept turning steadily by the moderate wind, which is a little cold on the hands." He concluded his New Mexico notes by penning, "I hope this mild weather continues until I manage to advance beyond these great open spaces."
An unimproved trail connecting Tucumcari with Amarillo already existed well before Highway 66 received its numerical designation in 1926. The pathway, some parts of it marked as the Ozark Trail Highway, roughly paralleled the early-twentieth-century Rock Island Railroad, though its surface was mostly graded dirt. According to the 1924 Official Automobile Blue Book, a national road guide, the roadway generally passed eastward toward Glenrio a distance of 48.5 miles. (Along the way drivers passed through San Jon at 26.2 miles and Endee at 41.4 miles. The road remained north of the Rock Island Railroad tracks until it crossed to the south side just west of Endee and then proceeded to the Texas state line. There it turned north for four-tenths of a mile to enter Glenrio, where it recrossed the tracks and turned back east.)
In spring 1920, the primitive roadway to Glenrio was receiving some attention. The State Record in Santa Fe reported on May 7 that "A.D. Flemister is making splendid headway in placing the road between Glenrio and Endee in improved condition," a maintenance job at the time considered to have been the most extensive grading it had ever received. Flooding became a problem along the dry washes. Two weeks later the same paper reported that springtime cloudbursts badly flooded "many sections of the newly dragged road running out of Glenrio." By 1923 state politicians discussed using some of the proceeds from state highway bonds to improve the Tucumcari-Glenrio road, though seemingly little happened until after the 1926 official designation of the roadway as U.S. Highway 66.
During spring and summer 1928, New Mexico state highway engineers surveyed Highway 66 between Montoya and the Texas state line. They proposed realigning the existing way to eliminate its two grade crossings over the Rock Island tracks just west of Endee and Glenrio. In July the state advertised for bids for "oiling" the surface of the roadway from Glenrio westward 15 miles toward San Jon to "do away with the sand hazard between these two points." The plan was to use an asphaltic highway treatment developed in California, "which is a mixing of oil, gravel, sand, and binding material into something like a heavy syrup form, which is poured on the road and rolled until it becomes practically as durable as concrete." Even with the pavement, the roadway never had any shoulders, so it ended at the outer edges of the "hard surface."
The inherent problem of the 1928 and later surfacing efforts between Tucumcari and Glenrio was that the base beneath the treatment consisted only of the locally available sand and caliche. No matter how much petroleum or bitumen coating was layered on top, the inadequate foundations gave way beneath the weight of trucks and other motor vehicles.
Highway 66 in eastern New Mexico became the scene of repeated one-vehicle car accidents that occurred when drivers veered too near to the edge of the road or when the sand and caliche base beneath the blacktop loosened or sloughed off. The number of these accidents was only increased by the nationwide tendencies of some drivers to imbibe alcohol and/or to stay behind the wheel too long, become fatigued, and nod off to sleep. The following are just a few of the repeated instances.
Left: West on the 1930s alignment of Highway Mobil service station at Glenrio as it appeared in 2014.
Center: A “cattle guard” restraining the movement of livestock on a portion of the 1930s road alignment in the Endee vicinity.
Right: When an open-style Model T Ford overturned or rolled, it offered its passengers only the slightest protection from injuries, as this 1925 photograph shows.
Center: A “cattle guard” restraining the movement of livestock on a portion of the 1930s road alignment in the Endee vicinity.
Right: When an open-style Model T Ford overturned or rolled, it offered its passengers only the slightest protection from injuries, as this 1925 photograph shows.
On April 2, 1930, Sylvia Taylor drove a coupe automobile with friend M.C. Taylor in the front seat and Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Johnson in the open-air rumble seat at the rear. They were returning home to Texico from Tucumcari when "evidently the car skidded in the loose dirt, throwing it off the highway and into a pit." Mrs. Johnson, "badly crushed about the heart and lungs," died in the Tucumcari hospital while Sylvia received a broken ankle. The other two passengers suffered bruises.
About a year later, John Cockman, his wife and three children from California came to Tucumcari to visit with her sister. Cochman was heading toward Glenrio on May 14 with brother-in-law Gilbert Hagler in a Stephens Bakery delivery truck when the vehicle overturned after "striking a soft shoulder on the highway" according to the press. The accident killed Cockman and seriously injured Hagler.
On June 20, 1940, seven members of the Rubin Skidmore family from Tacoma, Washington, were injured on their way to Minneapolis after "their automobile left the road and overturned in a field east of here on Highway 66," according to news reports from Tucumcari. All survived despite cuts, bruises, and abrasions.
The New Mexico Highway Department attempted to deal with some of the hazards that motorists encountered on the road between Tucumcari and the Texas state line. By early 1931 the agency began acquiring rights of way in Quay County in order to construct new culverts and creosoted timber bridges, to straighten curves, and to improve the "hard surface" of the roadway. By early May of that year, nine rail carloads of bridge building materials had reached the Rock Island siding in Glenrio, with plans for the new bridges to be completed within the year. Those now-historic wooden bridges still carry weight-restricted traffic on what today is a county road.
Repeated repairs took place. In 1932, the New Mexico Highway Department announced that "on U.S. 66 a project near Tucumcari was being base-coursed in preparation for oil surfacing; a three-mile project east of Tucumcari will be oil processed; oil surface will be applied for ten miles between Glenrio and Endee; and a new 14-mile project will be built extending the road." For the next two decades the state agency undertook similar "Band-Aid projects to repair and reinforce the two-lane blacktop between Tucumcari and Glenrio. Each job failed because the roadway never received a proper stone base due to restricted funding; the department never could afford the considerable expenditures that would have been required to bring in the crushed rock and/or gravel base that was needed all those years.
Finally in 1951 the New Mexico Highway Department realigned U.S. Highway 66 away from its earlier position closely parallel to the Rock Island Railroad tracks between Tucumcari and Glenrio. From the state-line community, the new roadway angled northwest, passed Endee and then returned to its older alignment to San Jon. From there it angled back to the northwest and then west to Tucumcari along Gaynell Boulevard as it had before. New Mexico Route 66 authority Andy House described how this latter-day roadway recently appeared at Glenrio: "Very quickly you can spot a split where one fork curves northward and quickly crosses a fence. This is the remnant of a 1952-80 alignment of the route that moves down the hill to cross a nice old concrete bridge over Trujillo Creek."
The state highway department would address the regular flooding of the roadway just on the eastern outskirts of town. For decades the natural wet-weather lake had provided a water source on an east-west trade corridor following the Canadian River before the 1902 founding of the town. It had served bands of Comanche Indians as well as the comancheros, Hispanic traders from the Rio Grande valley. For cross-country motorists in the early 20th century, however, the "lake" constituted nothing more than a great nuisance. Until the highway department hauled in gravel and crushed rock to raise the highway roadbed above the wet-weather flood level, it impeded travel.
In 1956, Congress passed the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, which resulted in the constructed of four-lane, restricted-access highways began in many parts of the United States. These freeways eventually stretched east-west and north-south across New Mexico, but many local businesspeople opposed it as it would go around their communities. Among the most vocal of the New Mexican opponents of the interstate were leaders in San Jon, which in 1970 had 308 people and a two-block commercial strip of filling stations, garages, and eateries. Through decades long court proceedings they were able to delay the construction of and prevented the opening of Interstate 40 just north of their community.
About a year later, John Cockman, his wife and three children from California came to Tucumcari to visit with her sister. Cochman was heading toward Glenrio on May 14 with brother-in-law Gilbert Hagler in a Stephens Bakery delivery truck when the vehicle overturned after "striking a soft shoulder on the highway" according to the press. The accident killed Cockman and seriously injured Hagler.
On June 20, 1940, seven members of the Rubin Skidmore family from Tacoma, Washington, were injured on their way to Minneapolis after "their automobile left the road and overturned in a field east of here on Highway 66," according to news reports from Tucumcari. All survived despite cuts, bruises, and abrasions.
The New Mexico Highway Department attempted to deal with some of the hazards that motorists encountered on the road between Tucumcari and the Texas state line. By early 1931 the agency began acquiring rights of way in Quay County in order to construct new culverts and creosoted timber bridges, to straighten curves, and to improve the "hard surface" of the roadway. By early May of that year, nine rail carloads of bridge building materials had reached the Rock Island siding in Glenrio, with plans for the new bridges to be completed within the year. Those now-historic wooden bridges still carry weight-restricted traffic on what today is a county road.
Repeated repairs took place. In 1932, the New Mexico Highway Department announced that "on U.S. 66 a project near Tucumcari was being base-coursed in preparation for oil surfacing; a three-mile project east of Tucumcari will be oil processed; oil surface will be applied for ten miles between Glenrio and Endee; and a new 14-mile project will be built extending the road." For the next two decades the state agency undertook similar "Band-Aid projects to repair and reinforce the two-lane blacktop between Tucumcari and Glenrio. Each job failed because the roadway never received a proper stone base due to restricted funding; the department never could afford the considerable expenditures that would have been required to bring in the crushed rock and/or gravel base that was needed all those years.
Finally in 1951 the New Mexico Highway Department realigned U.S. Highway 66 away from its earlier position closely parallel to the Rock Island Railroad tracks between Tucumcari and Glenrio. From the state-line community, the new roadway angled northwest, passed Endee and then returned to its older alignment to San Jon. From there it angled back to the northwest and then west to Tucumcari along Gaynell Boulevard as it had before. New Mexico Route 66 authority Andy House described how this latter-day roadway recently appeared at Glenrio: "Very quickly you can spot a split where one fork curves northward and quickly crosses a fence. This is the remnant of a 1952-80 alignment of the route that moves down the hill to cross a nice old concrete bridge over Trujillo Creek."
The state highway department would address the regular flooding of the roadway just on the eastern outskirts of town. For decades the natural wet-weather lake had provided a water source on an east-west trade corridor following the Canadian River before the 1902 founding of the town. It had served bands of Comanche Indians as well as the comancheros, Hispanic traders from the Rio Grande valley. For cross-country motorists in the early 20th century, however, the "lake" constituted nothing more than a great nuisance. Until the highway department hauled in gravel and crushed rock to raise the highway roadbed above the wet-weather flood level, it impeded travel.
In 1956, Congress passed the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, which resulted in the constructed of four-lane, restricted-access highways began in many parts of the United States. These freeways eventually stretched east-west and north-south across New Mexico, but many local businesspeople opposed it as it would go around their communities. Among the most vocal of the New Mexican opponents of the interstate were leaders in San Jon, which in 1970 had 308 people and a two-block commercial strip of filling stations, garages, and eateries. Through decades long court proceedings they were able to delay the construction of and prevented the opening of Interstate 40 just north of their community.
Left: A 1933 Chevrolet "turned turtle" next to a farmstead. On the road between Tucumcari and Glenrio there were woefully few scattered rural ranch houses between the towns where travelers in need could seek assistance.
Center: A two-door Dodge sedan with 1952 Texas license plates turned upside down after its driver lost control.
Right: One of the timber bridges erected between San Jon and Glenrio in 1931, still in service carrying local traffic.
Center: A two-door Dodge sedan with 1952 Texas license plates turned upside down after its driver lost control.
Right: One of the timber bridges erected between San Jon and Glenrio in 1931, still in service carrying local traffic.
In the meantime, increased traffic flow on narrow two-lane Highway 66 grew ever more dangerous. By 1969, B.D. Baziel, the Tucumcari area manager of Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph Company, for example, directed his service personnel for their safety to avoid using Route 66 to make service calls in San Jon and Glenrio even when this required them to take unpaved county roads. Impatient drivers insisted on attempting to pass slower vehicles, resulting in repeated head-on collisions, loss of lives, and appalling injuries. New Mexico writer K. Hilleson quoted an old-time traveler who told her, "Only six inches and a cigarette paper [were] between you and death on 66."
On Sept. 24, 1963, Wesley Knott of Adrian, Texas, died after the vehicle he was driving with three passengers sideswiped a Greyhound bus about half a mile west of Glenrio. His vehicle then swerved to the opposite side of the road and passed beneath the semi-trailer of a truck parked at the roadside. Such repeated collisions grew increasingly commonplace.
In 1970, the two-lane "Slaughter Alley" took the life of one of the people who had most ardently sought its replacement, Tucumcari-Quay County Chamber of Commerce past president, Damon A. Kvols, who had testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee on the dangers of the narrow Highway 66 in eastern New Mexico. At 8:55 a.m. on April 6, about five miles west of Glenrio, he apparently fell asleep behind the wheel and swung into oncoming traffic, his late-model car colliding head-on with a semi-trailer truck loaded with new automobiles. The trucker lived, but the impact took Kvols's life instantly.
Ceremonies for the new Interstate 40 in Tucumcari took place on June 25, 1981, but traffic had already begun flowing a month earlier. The towns of San Jon, Endee, and Glenrio withered away as the vehicles on the freeway sped past them. The old 1930s alignment of former Highway 66 reverted completely to being a county road as it had been decades earlier before the Mother Road, while the 1950s alignment was either abandoned or adapted as frontage road for the Interstate.
Today, the 1930s roadway remains drivable for residents and heritage tourists seeking a historic road trip experience.
The former asphalt paving on top of the sand and caliche base wore down and was removed years ago, so today the unpaved 1930s roadway resembles the Route 66 of yore. Its historic dangers, however, remain just as threatening as in the past. The sand and caliche base still give way surprisingly easily, the surface becomes incredibly slippery after a rain, and vehicle tires continue to stir up choking clouds of dust during dry weather. Enjoy the drive, take it slowly, and stay alert.
On Sept. 24, 1963, Wesley Knott of Adrian, Texas, died after the vehicle he was driving with three passengers sideswiped a Greyhound bus about half a mile west of Glenrio. His vehicle then swerved to the opposite side of the road and passed beneath the semi-trailer of a truck parked at the roadside. Such repeated collisions grew increasingly commonplace.
In 1970, the two-lane "Slaughter Alley" took the life of one of the people who had most ardently sought its replacement, Tucumcari-Quay County Chamber of Commerce past president, Damon A. Kvols, who had testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee on the dangers of the narrow Highway 66 in eastern New Mexico. At 8:55 a.m. on April 6, about five miles west of Glenrio, he apparently fell asleep behind the wheel and swung into oncoming traffic, his late-model car colliding head-on with a semi-trailer truck loaded with new automobiles. The trucker lived, but the impact took Kvols's life instantly.
Ceremonies for the new Interstate 40 in Tucumcari took place on June 25, 1981, but traffic had already begun flowing a month earlier. The towns of San Jon, Endee, and Glenrio withered away as the vehicles on the freeway sped past them. The old 1930s alignment of former Highway 66 reverted completely to being a county road as it had been decades earlier before the Mother Road, while the 1950s alignment was either abandoned or adapted as frontage road for the Interstate.
Today, the 1930s roadway remains drivable for residents and heritage tourists seeking a historic road trip experience.
The former asphalt paving on top of the sand and caliche base wore down and was removed years ago, so today the unpaved 1930s roadway resembles the Route 66 of yore. Its historic dangers, however, remain just as threatening as in the past. The sand and caliche base still give way surprisingly easily, the surface becomes incredibly slippery after a rain, and vehicle tires continue to stir up choking clouds of dust during dry weather. Enjoy the drive, take it slowly, and stay alert.
Left: Detail of one of the 1931 timber bridges showing its steel-cable and wood-post "guard rails."
Center: One of the roadside businesses that closed after being bypassed by the 1981 opening of Interstate 40 was Homer Ehresman's Texas Longhor Motel and Café at the state line in Glenrio. As this match cover correctly stated, it was the "first & last stop in Texas."
Right:Once westbound traveled reached Tucumcari, most were impressed by the prominence of Tucumcari Mountain as the backdrop for the town. Some of them purchased real-photo postcards like this one as souvenirs of the view or to mail home to friends and family members.
Center: One of the roadside businesses that closed after being bypassed by the 1981 opening of Interstate 40 was Homer Ehresman's Texas Longhor Motel and Café at the state line in Glenrio. As this match cover correctly stated, it was the "first & last stop in Texas."
Right:Once westbound traveled reached Tucumcari, most were impressed by the prominence of Tucumcari Mountain as the backdrop for the town. Some of them purchased real-photo postcards like this one as souvenirs of the view or to mail home to friends and family members.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
T. Lindsay Baker a member of the New Mexico Route 66 Association, is the author of two dozen books on the history of the American West. He wrote Portrait of Route 66 Images from the Curt Teich Postcard Archives (University of Oklahoma Press, 2016) as well as Eating Up Route 66: Foodways on America’s Mother Road (University of Oklahoma Press, 2022). He has driven the length of Route 66 both directions behind the wheel of an unmodified, four-cylinder 1930 Ford. |
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