by Jim Hinckley
The reawakening interest in Route 66 has kept the faintest spark of life glowing, however. Perhaps the most notable manifestation of this is the preservation of the 66 Super Service Station, dating to circa 1930.
Less than a dozen miles west of Alanreed are the forlorn remnants of Jericho, a small community with origins dating to 1902 and the establishment of a station for the Chicago, Rock Island & Gulf Railway. Ironically, traffic on Route 66 made the dark days of the Great Depression the glory days for Jericho.
At its peak during the early 1930s, the town boasted three stores, a grain elevator, a tourist court, a garage, and a filling station. But the realignment of the highway and the changing face of agriculture in the Panhandle fueled the town’s demise. By 1955, the population no longer was sufficient to warrant a post office.
The original alignment of Route 66 from Jericho to Groom is notorious in the annals of the highway’s history. This section, known as the Jericho Gap, was infamous for mud, ruts, and enterprising farmers ready to rescue motorists for a few dollars. The Texas Department of Transportation began work to close the gap with a paved bypass in 1928, and the project was completed in 1931.
Groom, forty-two miles east of Amarillo, appears to be another ghost along Route 66, with its empty auto courts and service stations, but in actuality the town has maintained a rather steady population: 800 in 1972 and 587 in 2000. Conway has a similar appearance, but its population has dropped from a high of 175 in 1969 to less than 20 today.
Alfred Rowe
ALFRED ROWE, founder of McLean and master of the RO Ranch, lived a life of amazingly diverse adventures. Born in Lima, Peru, and educated in England, he immigrated to the United States in 1878 after years spent in worldwide exploration.
Even though his secondary education centered on agricultural studies, Rowe chose to learn the art of American ranching in the Texas Panhandle from the ground up. A year after literally learning the ropes from legendary pioneer rancher Charles Goodnight, Rowe began purchasing trail herds, as well as complete outfits. He started his own ranch using an abandoned dugout as headquarters and drove his herds to Dodge City in Kansas.
By 1895, the RO Ranch encompassed more than two hundred thousand acres of owned and leased lands, and Rowe was one of the most successful ranchers on the Panhandle plains. This success fueled other endeavors on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and soon he was traveling, often with his family, to England at least twice a year.
With the establishment of rail lines to the north and south of the ranch, Rowe diversified his business enterprises and began selling small farms. Tying this and his ranching together was his donation of land, in 1902, for a cattle-loading facility on the Rock Island Railroad and the platting of an accompanying town site.
Rowe’s star was still rising when, in 1912 on a return trip from England, he tragically became a victim of the sinking of the H.M.S. Titanic.
The winds play a haunting melody in Jericho as they whisper through glassless windows and swirl dust on floors.
Amid the ruins of Jericho, the rusty bones of what was once the pride of Detroit provide a link to the modern era.
THE STAKED PLAINS
IN HIS SEMINAL WORK published in 1946, A Guide Book to Highway 66, author Jack Rittenhouse says about the road west of Amarillo: “Now you are on the ‘STAKED PLAINS,’ or ‘Llano Estacdo’ as the Spaniards called it. The origin of the name is disputed, but it is generally taken to be derived from the legend that early pioneers drove stakes along their trails for lack of natural landmarks to guide them.”
Vestiges of the Route 66 glory days and the frontier era in which they were founded pepper the communities in the western half of the Panhandle, but few qualify as ghost towns. The exceptions are Boise (less than a site on an early alignment of the highway that is on private property), Wildorado, and Glenrio.
Depending on the date of the map you consult, Glenrio may be shown in New Mexico or Texas, but it is actually in the latter astride the border in northwestern Deaf Smith County. At least most of the town is in Texas; Jack Rittenhouse notes that, in 1946, the depot was on the west side of the state line, and the business district was on the east.
Some twenty years before the road through town was marked with a shield emblazoned with two sixes, Glenrio was a farming town on the Chicago, Rock Island & Gulf Railway. The depot and railyard were beehives of activity. Cattle and produce were loaded on outbound shipments, while freight and dry goods for the area’s farms and ranches came inbound.
A vintage Jeep out to pasture seems an apt monument to the landscape of the Staked Plains that embraces the ghostly remnants of Glenrio.
Glenrio is accessed from exit 0 on Interstate 40.
A station in Glenrio stands in silent testimony to an era when traffic flowed through town day and night without respite.
By the 1920s, the little town on the staked plains was a quiet but busy community with a hotel, a land office, a hardware store, a grocery store, and several cafés and service stations. It even had a newspaper, the Glenrio Tribune.
What it did not have were bars or liquor stores, since Deaf Smith County was dry. This posed no real hardship on residents, though, since libations were but a dusty five-mile drive to the west in Endee, New Mexico.
With the closure of the depot in 1955, the asphalt life-line that was Route 66 became the town’s primary source of revenue. Upon completion of Interstate 40 in 1973 and the severance of this tenuous hold, Glenrio quickly succumbed to abandonment.
Today, Glenrio is a photographer’s paradise, with its forlorn ruins casting long shadows over the empty asphalt of the old highway. Among the favored photo ops are the empty remnants of the Texas Longhorn Motel and Café, once promoted with a sign that read “First Stop in Texas” on one side and “Last Stop in Texas” on the other.
The Longhorn story begins with the opening of the State Line Bar on the New Mexico side of the state line in 1934 by Homer and Margaret Ehresman. As an interesting historic curiosity, Margaret ran the post office from this location, and an early photo shows this building with “Post Office Glenrio N.M.” over the door.
In 1946, rumors of a pending realignment led the Ehresmans to relocate their business five miles west to Endee, New Mexico. In 1950, they returned and opened the Longhorn.
The Longhorn and the Ehresmans’ story encapsulates life along Route 66 in the preinterstate era. For people like Homer and Margaret, Route 66 was more than a highway; it was an asphalt opportunity with possibilities only limited by the imagination and the amount of expended effort.
Glenrio’s Texas Longhorn, promoted as the first and last motel in Texas, is now little more than a forlorn relic from better times. Joe Sonderman collection
DON’T MISS
There are some marvelous gems found along this section of Route 66. In Vega, you can see the refurbished Magnolia Station, built in 1924 by Colonel J. T. Owen, and Dot’s Mini Museum.
In Adrian, the geographical midpoint of Route 66, there is the Midpoint Café, a classic roadside café suspended in time that specializes in fresh pies.
Imagine the parade of travelers headed east and west who stopped at Glenrio’s State Line Bar on the New Mexico side of the border to cool the radiator and top off the tank. Joe Sonderman collection
NEW MEXICO
The blending of weathered wood and faded steel in San Jose encapsulates the timeless and diverse nature of New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment.
Dillia survived the realignment of Route 66 in 1937 and the subsequent bypass just as it weathered and survived the century before the designation of that highway.
THE GHOST TOWNS OF ROUTE 66 in New Mexico are unique among those found along this historic highway. They are also some of the oldest.
In some, the ghostly remnants of Route 66, even those dating to the 1920s, seem oddly out of place and modern when seen against the backdrop of churches that date to the 1820s or stores that met the needs of travelers on the Santa Fe Trail. Amazingly, a few of t
hese ghosts in the Land of Enchantment were prosperous, modern communities long before the thirteen colonies became the United States of America.
INTRODUCTION TO THE LAND OF ENCHANTMENT
THE ROUTE 66 OF THE 1950S parallels Interstate 40 on its westward course across the high plains and into the landscape dominated by buttes, mesas, and tortured stone edifices farther west. The first miles of Route 66 of the Okies, of the Bunion Derby, and of Jack Rittenhouse are now a gravel track across the rolling plains, through rolling hills, and over vintage bridges of wood.
Five miles west of Glenrio are the scattered ruins that mark the site of Endee, founded as a supply center for area ranches, including the sprawling ND Ranch that began operation in 1882. In 1946, Jack Rittenhouse notes that the town consisted of 110 people, a gas station, a garage, a grocery store, a school, and a “scant” handful of cabins.
Today, the tumbledown remnants nestled on a windswept knoll framed by vast Western landscapes offer a wide array of unique photographic opportunities. A touch of comedic relief is found in a building with “Modern Rest Rooms” emblazoned on the side.
Rittenhouse found Bard, a few miles to the west, had even less to offer the traveler: “Population 26; gas and garage. This ‘Town’ consists of a single building, but it includes a post office.” Scattered ruins north of exit 361 on Interstate 40 are all that remain.
San Jon (pronounced San Hone) was founded in 1902 as a ranching and farming supply center fifteen miles west of Glenrio on the Tucumcari & Memphis Railroad. It was once the largest town on the eastern plains of New Mexico. Rittenhouse came across gas stations, garages, the San Jon Implement Company, two auto courts, several cafés, a hotel, and a variety of stores. “Main Street” (Route 66) was an endless stream of traffic every hour of the day, every day of the week.
The neon no longer lights the night at the Circle M Motel, Smith’s Café, or the Western Motel. The Old Route 66 Truck and Auto Parts garage no longer serves as an oasis for the traveler who has an over-heating car. Today, San Jon clings to life by a thread, its population hovering somewhere around the two hundred mark, and a multiservice truck stop near exit 356 serves as one of the last vestiges of a once vital business district.
Photo postcards like this one of a station in Endee are sought-after Route 66 artifacts because they were never produced in large quantities. Joe Sonderman collection
Adding a comedic tone to the ghostly atmosphere is a building signed “Modern Rest Rooms,” one of the best-preserved structures in Endee.
At the end of the pavement at the west end of Glenrio, continue across the concrete bridge and follow the graded gravel road eighteen miles to San Jon. If the road is muddy, use of exit 356 or 361 is suggested.
The ruins of Endee convey a charming serenity nestled among towering trees and meadows of prairie grass along an equally empty highway.
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.
San Jon clings to life by the thinnest of threads, but time is running out for an old station on Route 66.
MONTOYA, NEWKIRK, CUERVO
WEST OF TUCUMCARI, 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
BEFORE 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.
Follow Interstate 40 west to exit 256, U.S. Highway 84, and turn north. Continue north through Dillia to Interstate 125. At exit 339, join the frontage road crossing Interstate 25 at exit 319. From this exit, continue on the south frontage road. At exit 307, cross under Interstate 25 and follow Highway 63 north to Pe
cos, then turn left on Highway 50 to Glorietta.
It stretches the most fertile imagination to picture Romeroville as a place once visited by presidents and dignitaries or as a town worthy of its namesake, Don Trinidad Romero.
In addition to operating a freight company that hauled all manner of goods from Kansas City to Santa Fe, Romero ranched vast land holdings and served as a probate judge as well as a member of the territorial House of Representatives. He also served as a U.S. Marshall and operated a number of mercantile stores.
His home in Romeroville was a true showpiece that stood in stark contrast to the adobe and rough-cut lumber houses common on the Western frontier. According to Anna N. Clark, the interior consisted of a “dozen large, lofty, high ceiling rooms paneled in walnut. The downstairs rooms had sliding doors opening into the spacious ballroom. There was a low, wide, curving stairway.”
Before its conversion into an asylum and its destruction by fire in the 1920s, the home of Don Romero was a focal point for high society in northeastern New Mexico. The guest list reads like a Who’s Who of the late nineteenth century and includes President Ulysses S. Grant, President Rutherford B. Hayes, and General Tecumseh Sherman.
In Tecolote, Route 66 winds through a pleasant old plaza and past the ancient church to dead-end where a bridge over Tecolote Creek once stood. A marker in the plaza memorializes Tecolote as a former stop on the Santa Fe Trail. It was in this plaza that General Stephen Kearny, in August 1846 during the Mexican-American War, announced that he had replaced Governor Manuel Armijo and that the citizens were no longer under the rule of Mexican sovereignty.