After the Gold Rush: 5 Ghost Towns to Explore This Fall

Abandoned store, Cuervo, New Mexico

Went through your casino money before you went through your vacation days? These things happen. Why not try some of these great western ghost towns. Continued

2 Wheels, 14 Days, 2,448 Miles: A Motorcycle Tour of Route 66

One of my favorite old Life Magazine covers, it 
seems to have influenced my young mind quite a lot.

(NYTimes) It’s a common refrain that Route 66 no longer exists. And it’s true, in a way. The 100-year-old road that stretches from Chicago to Santa Monica was decommissioned in 1985. You won’t find it listed on modern maps as a contiguous highway. And yet the 2,448-mile road — at first largely unpaved, then over time populated with so many motels and diners and outlandish attractions that it became central to the American experience, only later to be bypassed, forgotten, left to crumble — somehow endures. Continued

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

The Pralines, Pecan Log Rolls and Nostalgia Fueling the Stuckey’s Revival

Old Stuckey's billboard, just west of Tucumcari, New Mexico

(NYTimes) In June 2020, having used her life savings to buy back the failing roadside franchise that bears her family name, Stephanie Stuckey was in a Marion, Ark., parking lot in tears. The Stuckey’s in front of her was beyond decrepit; it was disreputable. A storm had opened a hole in the signature teal tile roof, and the owners hadn’t bothered to repair it. Sobbing, she called her vice president and said, “I can’t even walk into this store.” Without missing a beat he replied, “Welcome to your empire.” Continued

Texas’ Best-Kept Secret: The Second-Largest Canyon in the U.S.

 

(Daily Beast) The history of this area is game changing,” Phyllis Nickum says as I stare into Palo Duro Canyon, a 120-mile-long chasm slicing through the level landscape of the Texas panhandle just south of Amarillo. Palo Duro marks the southern border of Nickum’s Los Cedros Ranch, a 3,000-acre spread where she raises cattle, horses, and harvests wheat and water. It’s also home to “Cowgirls and Cowboys in the West,” the ranch’s tourist arm, which celebrates Western heritage through history on horseback tours, eco-tourism, and chuckwagon events complete with singing cowboys. Continued

Remembering the plane-train days

(Eastern New Mexico News) You could fly from Clovis to Kansas City for $47 in those days.
If you were brave enough.
Newspaper Editor Mack Stanton and Santa Fe railroader Charles Reichart were overheard discussing safety and health factors related to air travel.
They made “a solemn agreement that each would hold the other’s head in the event air sickness overtook them.” Continued

Remembering Route 66’s lost leg through Santa Fe

(Santa Fe New Mexican) Route 66 through Santa Fe?

Yes, they came together for a short time in the 1920s and ’30s, long before the road was romanticized by singers, authors and East Coast migrants headed for the Pacific Coast. But as history, politics and, perhaps, common sense would have it, Route 66’s role in Northern New Mexico was fleeting. Continued

Abandoned Route 66

 

Much of Route 66 in New Mexico and Texas serves as a frontage road for Interstate 40 and isn't really abandoned at all, but there are stretches, here and there, that are almost completely deserted. This one is between Tucumcari and Bard, on the north side of 40.

The Abernathy Kids

 

(405 Magazine) A century ago, in the years between statehood and the beginning of World War I, 9-year-old Louis “Bud” Abernathy and his 5-year-old brother, Temple, hankered for adventure.
Their dreams were not unusual. What was out of the ordinary was that their father said yes.
After the boys asked to ride their horses by themselves from Oklahoma to Santa Fe to see the new mansion of the governor, Jack Abernathy seriously considered their request. Their mother had died, and they were growing up fast.
With every confidence in their horsemanship, he laid down some guidelines, opened a checking account for each with $100 apiece and encouraged them to saddle up. Continued

Castaneda Hotel’s south wing likely will open April 1

La Castaneda before restoration began.

(Route 66 News) The south wing of the historic Castaneda Hotel in Las Vegas, New Mexico, likely will open to overnight travelers for the first time in decades on April 1. Continued

Transcontinental Air Transport

 

(Wikipedia) Transcontinental Air Transport (T-A-T) was an airline founded in 1928 by Clement Melville Keys that merged in 1930 with Western Air Express to form what became TWA. Keys enlisted the help of Charles Lindbergh to design a transcontinental network to get government airmail contracts.
… It initially offered a 48-hour coast to coast trip (trains by night, and planes by day in nine flights), with the first leg on the Pennsylvania Railroad overnight from New York City to Columbus, Ohio. There, passengers boarded a Ford Trimotor aircraft at Port Columbus International Airport that flew to Waynoka, Oklahoma. Then, passengers caught the Santa Fe Railway for an overnight trip to Clovis, New Mexico, where they would take a second Ford Trimotor flight to Los Angeles. Continued

Preservation group stops in Tucumcari

 

(Quay County Sun) Members of a cross country road trip to promote the addition of U.S. Route 66 as a National Historic Trail stopped Thursday in Tucumcari.
… “Driving Route 66 is the quintessential American road trip,” said Amy Webb, senior field director of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. “It is the most iconic, culturally-celebrated and internationally-recognized stretch of highway in America." Continued

The Balancing Act of Arches

Photo of Arches National Park by Carol Highsmith via The Library of Congress.

(John O’Connor) Decades ago, the pioneering writer Edward Abbey immortalized then-empty Arches National Park. Can it survive the modern influx of visitors? Continued

AMBUS?

Is this the future of the Raton line?

(Albuquerque Journal) Travelers may no longer be able to take the train from Chicago to Los Angeles – and through a long stretch of northeastern New Mexico.

Buses would take travelers for more than 400 miles of the route. Continued

Adobe Gazebo

 

You don't have to be a Santa Fe millionaire to enjoy a picnic in this fine building. It's available free, first come first serve, courtesy of the National Park Service, at the Abo Salinas Pueblo Missions. It's located just a few miles east of Mountainair, New Mexico on U.S. 60.

New Mexico True Stories - The Mother Road

Ghost Town Roundup: Glenrio, Texas - New Mexico

Glenrio straddles the Texas/New Mexico border, just south of I-40. It's a must for vintage Route 66 fans. Like all ghost towns, it ain't your property, so stay out of the buildings.

 

Mary Colter

(Wikipedia) Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter (April 4, 1869 – January 8, 1958) was an American architect and designer. She was one of the very few female American architects in her day.
She was the designer of many landmark buildings and spaces for the Fred Harvey Company and the Santa Fe Railroad, notably in Grand Canyon National Park.
Her work had enormous influence as she helped to create a style, blending Spanish Colonial Revival and Mission Revival architecture with Native American motifs and Rustic elements, that became popular throughout the Southwest. Continued

The Abernathy Kids

 

(405 Magazine) A century ago, in the years between statehood and the beginning of World War I, 9-year-old Louis “Bud” Abernathy and his 5-year-old brother, Temple, hankered for adventure.
Their dreams were not unusual. What was out of the ordinary was that their father said yes.
After the boys asked to ride their horses by themselves from Oklahoma to Santa Fe to see the new mansion of the governor, Jack Abernathy seriously considered their request. Their mother had died, and they were growing up fast. With every confidence in their horsemanship, he laid down some guidelines, opened a checking account for each with $100 apiece and encouraged them to saddle up. Continued

The World’s Best Hitchhiker on the Secrets of His Success

(NYTimes) Juan Villarino counts cars. If one passes him every minute, that’s excellent; one every five minutes, and he gets worried. One every 20 minutes, and he knows he’s really in the middle of nowhere. He once waited for two days in Tibet before a single car stopped; for 24 hours, on a frigid winter route, in Patagonia.
Based on notes he keeps in pocket-size spiral journals, he compiles statistics, including average wait times in every country he has ever hitchhiked across, and the numbers aren’t what you would expect — which is, in part, why he collects them in the first place. Continued