Cars removed from free car museum at former Russell’s Travel Center

I will miss Russell's and their Big Rig Burger.
If there was ever a safe haven on the road, it was Russell's.

(Route 66 News) ... The apparent and imminent closure of the museum follows the 2023 sale of Russell’s Travel Center to TravelCenters of America. Russell’s founders Emory and Barbara Russell decided to sell because both were in their 80s. They also sold another Russell’s truck stop in Springer, New Mexico, that year. At the time of the sale, TA agreed with Russell’s to keep the family name on the business for three years. Continued

Event marks Tucumcari depot's 100th year

 

Former Southern Pacific Railroad brakeman Bo Golson wouldn't have missed the 100th birthday celebration Friday of the former Tucumcari Union Station for anything. In fact, he dressed up for the occasion. Golson donned a newsboy cap and vintage OshKosh overalls that included a quartz pocket watch he bought from the railroad's credit union while stationed in Tucumcari during the early 1980s. In full railroad uniform, he became a walking throwback during Tucumcari MainStreet's first Down at the Depot event of the summer. Continued

Pioneer rancher and traildriver born in Mississippi

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1836, Robert Kelsey Wylie was born in Tishomingo County, Mississippi.
… In 1865 he began driving cattle to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, a business he continued for ten years. He established cattle ranches near Ballinger and at Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos River. He also started a sheep ranch near Van Horn.
At various times he supplied cattle to John S. Chisum and to the foundation herd of the Matador Ranch. Continued

Border photographer documents Mexican Revolution

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1913, Brownsville photographer Robert Runyon arrived in Matamoros and began compiling a unique record of the Mexican Revolution along the Texas-Mexico border. The Kentucky native arrived in Texas in 1909 and opened a photography studio the following year.
He is best known for his coverage of the revolutionary conflict in northeastern Mexico between 1913 and 1916. He traveled to Matamoros the day after its Federal garrison had been captured by Gen. Lucio Blanco's Constitutionalist revolutionary forces. Continued

Hometown Hero: Jeremy Reeves

I’ll give you three guesses: 

No, not the football player, though that’s a good guess, they share the same name. 

No, not the guy from Brideshead Revisited. 

And not the 80’s Sherlock Holmes. 

    Jeremy Reeves is a tobacco blender. He’s like a chef, serving up classic old recipes and creating tasty new ones. He is the head blender at Cornell and Diehl (C&D), the last big pipe tobacco manufacturer in the United States.     

    But even when they had serious competition, not long ago, C&D was a cut above the rest. When I say big, I mean relatively big, they won’t be knocking on “Big Tobacco’s” doors anytime soon. Yet they did produce 120,000 pounds of pipe tobacco in 2023, in 150 varieties. I wonder, how many pipe bowls that would fill? Millions, I guess. 

    Anyway, back to Jeremy, he was born in Portales, yes, Portales New Mexico. I had no idea and I don’t know any more about his life in Roosevelt County. Did he grow up here? Did he come here to attend ENMU? Was he whisked away at birth, destined to tobacco greatness, like some smoky Dalai Lama? I just don’t know. 

    I do know that Reeves is in a small school of blenders like Per Jenson, Russ Ouellette, and Rudiger Will, all legends in the field. Reeves and C&D not only produce fine old school tobaccos, they are often thinking of new variations on the theme. They have put out a yearly vintage variety of Virginia tobacco, when they can find a great candidate. A few years back, Reeves made a blend that included honey from his own hives, which was so popular, he had to resort to a larger apiary for the next year’s batch. He is also working on a fitting replacement for Syrian tobacco (a big deal if you smoke a pipe), a variety that has gone commercially extinct. 

    C&D is committed to keeping the old pastime alive and has partnered with a perique farm in Louisiana, a grower in Turkey, and Ireland’s most prominent pipe manufacturer. Despite their international adventures, the lion’s share of C&D’s product is grown, processed, and packaged in the U.S.A. The company does its work in South Carolina. 

    I think Reeves would be the first one to admit he has a dream job. And that’s my point: there is a world of great, attainable occupations out there. If you browse through this blog, you will see New Mexicans who have won the Nobel Prize (from Raton), been Treasurer of the United States (Mountainair), that bult a Hotel Empire (San Antonio), and many more. 

    It seems like all the great achievers live in New York City or Los Angeles, but they didn’t come from there, they came from here, wherever here happens to be, even New Mexico. 

    This is all done to make money of course, but for Reeves and his fellow blenders, it is also a labor of love. How often does that happen? 

    {Thanks to the good people at The Humidor, in Portales, who first told me Reeves was from here. And yeah, that Factory Smokes Maduro cigar was pretty darn good.}

Jal House Rock or Get Your Potash in Gear!

Filmmaker may use Princess Theatre

(Quay County Sun) A filmmaker told the Tucumcari Lodgers Tax Advisory Board on Wednesday he is investigating the possibility of using the long-closed Princess Theatre in a movie that centers around the history of the Fender Telecaster electric guitar. Continued

New life in a ghost town

(Quay County Sun) GLENRIO - This longtime Route 66 ghost town on the easternmost edge of Quay County suddenly appears to be getting its first business in more than 40 years. Subcontractors from the Amarillo area descended on the Texas-New Mexico border town last week to set up a temporary chain-link fence around the long-abandoned State Line Cafe and Texas Longhorn Motel complex - the latter known for its sign that stated it was the first or last motel in Texas - and remove their rotted roofs. Continued

In Northeast New Mexico, the beginnings of promise — and tension

Santa Fe Trail marker near Grenville, New Mexico

(Santa Fe New Mexican) McNEES CROSSING, N.M. — Charles Jordan has seen a lot of living — and enjoyed it. His eyes are searching, his smile welcoming, the lines just below his eyes a roadmap of possibility. You can almost imagine him joining a caravan of traders on the Santa Fe Trail some 200 years ago. Standing in a vast prairie of beautiful emptiness, Jordan looked at a 1920s-era monument surrounded by grazing cows that commemorates a long-forgotten historic event, one tied to the events on that trail. Continued

David Thomas: Zeroing in on Southern New Mexico History

(Wild West) ... After launching a software company and writing computer programming manuals, he went on to author well-received books about New Mexico history, including several about the notorious outlaw Billy the Kid and the Lincoln County War. Thomas, 75, recently spoke with Wild West about his writing and some of the more interesting figures from the Mesilla Valley. Continued

Old House 180

Ancho, New Mexico

Old House 179

"Gumm House" White Oaks, New Mexico

Old House 178

Ancho, New Mexico

Old House 177

Ancho, New Mexico

(Wikipedia) ... With the arrival of the railway in 1901 and the discovery of gypsum and clay, the Ancho Brick Plant was established and began producing bricks. The plant eventually grew to 16 kilns. In 1906, the Ancho Brick Plant supplied several tons of bricks which were shipped by railway to San Francisco to help rebuild the city after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Continued

Historic governor's home demolished

(ENMN) ... Despite months of public pleading to save the former home of Gov. Washington Ellsworth Lindsey, workers began tearing it down about 8 a.m., clouds of dust enveloping the heavy equipment on the cool, cloudy morning. Within the hour, only rubble remained. Continued

James Bell

James Bell, the good cop, forever shackled in legend to Bob Olinger's bad, 
both shot and killed by Billy the Kid in 1881. Cedarvale Cemetery, White Oaks, New Mexico.

La Tiendita

Tucumcari

Tucumcari Storefronts

INSIDE THE WILD HUNT FOR FORREST FENN'S HIDDEN TREASURE

"Absconding with the Treasure" by N. C. Wyeth

(CrimeReads) ... “How did we not think to check the weather?” I asked, mostly rhetorically. “It’s the desert. I thought the weather was always the same here,” Beep said, looking perplexed. A pasty Canadian, he was shivering in the passenger seat in a gray fantasy sports T-shirt and black gym shorts, fully unprepared for the deluge. At least he was wearing a boonie hat he’d purchased because it seemed like good hunting gear, its floppy brim partially hiding his people-pleaser eyes. Just as well. I figured he’d be looking at me with disappointment for my embarrassing lack of preparation. Quite the auspicious start to our careers as treasure hunters. Continued

General Store

White Oaks, New Mexico