Tucumcari is Burning

 

According to the Quay County Sun, the Tucumcari Motel burned down last night. The motel wasn't constructed like most old motels or tourist courts, so I assume that it was originally a hotel or boarding house. It, quite likely, represented a transition from the railroad days to the automobile era, or perhaps from the Ozark Trail days to the Route 66/54 era.
A lot of things have been burning down in Tucumcari lately: the Tucumcari Animal Hospital, the Federal Building, the Hampton Inn, the Payless Inn & the Tucumcari Motel. 
Many of the tourists who visit Tucumcari aren't just interested in the vintage motels operating on Route 66, they also like the old buildings in town, including the abandoned ones. Especially the abandoned ones.
I remember a conversation I had with a photographer in a large east coast camera store. He was an architectural photographer by profession. "What kind of buildings do you like best?," I asked him. "I love the decrepit stuff," he said with a smile.
I can't say there's millions of people who travel the world looking to document "decrepit stuff," but there are tens of thousands, and many of them travel to Tucumcari to do so. If you don't believe me just do an image search on Google using the term "Tucumcari." What many see as an eyesore is actually part of the town's charm and thus part of its economic base as well.
Because of its unique history, many of the towns in our region (Tucumcari, Clovis, Portales, Santa Rosa to name a few), are like living architectural museums, almost frozen in time, but they won't be if we allow people to burn it all down, piece by piece.