Ghost Towns of Route 66 (16 page)
Read Ghost Towns of Route 66 Online
Authors: Jim Hinckley
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 Pecos, 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.
The scruffy little town barely warranted a notation in the journal of William Anderson Thornton, a participant in the military expedition to the New Mexico Territory in 1855: “The villages of Vegas and Tecolote made from unburnt clay and in appearances resemble unburnt brick kilns in the States. People poor and dirty. Flocks of sheep, goats, and cattle very numerous.
Tecolote's clay buildings still “resemble unburnt kilns,” as described by soldier William Anderson Thornton in 1855.
The church in oft-overlooked San Jose predates the christening of Route 66 by a century, and the town's origins can be traced back another fifty years.
Now closed, the steel truss bridge spanning the Pecos River in San Jose dates to 1921, five years before Route 66 was built through the historic plaza.
Route 66, and the traffic that flowed east and west, served as the catalyst for the Pigeon Ranch in Glorieta Pass to be transformed from historic site to tourist attraction.
Joe Sonderman collection
“The scenery as we advanced towards Tecolote becoming more grand and beautiful. Our camp is located on a beautiful spot overlooking the mud village.” The scenery along this portion of Route 66, now largely Interstate 25, rates among the most stunning anywhere along the highway's path.
San Jose, to the west on the banks of the Pecos River, is another unassuming village. Its founding is traced to a land grant issued by Governor Don Fernando Chacon in 1794. A post office, a scattering of homes of indeterminate age, and the plaza church built in 1826, as well as a now-truncated steel arch bridge built in 1921, present an oddly forlorn and timeless feel.
Rowe and Ilfield were never more than wide spots in the road, and both are even less today. To the west is the Old Pigeon Ranch, a historic site that was never really a town, even though for a time it functioned as a small service stop for travelers on the Santa Fe Trail.
Purportedly, ranch owner Alexander Valle, a Frenchman who spoke “pigeon” English, selected the site for his ranch because of its central location on the Santa Fe Trail and the property's well that had been in continuous use for more than 150 years. The ranch took on a new importance in March 1862 when Union and Confederate forces clashed at nearby Glorieta Pass, the highest point on Route 66 before 1937, and the barn served as a field hospital.
In 1924, Thomas Greer transformed the site into a tourist attraction. On one side of the road, signs proclaimed, “Drink Again from the Fountain of YouthâOld Indian-Spanish-American Well Over 388 Years Old.” On the north side of the highway, the old adobe barn was plastered with signs proclaiming its association with the historic Civil War battle.
Shortly after the realignment of the highway in 1937, the attraction closed. The barn, now preserved by the National Park Service, and the well are all that remain.
THE TIMELESS LAND
T
HE LAND WEST OF ALBUQUERQUE
seems ancient and the intrusions of man out of context. The exceptions, however, are the towns and roadside remnants that line Route 66 between Albuquerque, an old Spanish presidio transformed into a modern metropolis, and the breathtaking buttes and mesas that straddle the border of Arizona and New Mexico.
These ruins, remnants, and dusty relics seem as much a part of the landscape as the stones themselves. In part, their weathering from centuries of blowing snow and dry desert winds enhances the illusion.
Correo, on the pre-1937 alignment of the highway, had always been a service center. From its 1914 inception as a railroad station, it had met the needs of travelers with a general store and the needs of locals with the only post office for miles. With the realignment of Route 66 and closure of the station, this wide spot in the road quickly became a dusty, empty place.
Paraje was established by a small group of Laguna Indian farmers, but it soon became a favored stop for the new breed of adventurers who called themselves motorists. The town had a population large enough to warrant a post office from 1867 to 1910, but by 1946, Jack Rittenhouse notes that only a small trading post remained.
West of the centuries-old Laguna Pueblo is Budville Trading Company, originally a trading post and Phillips 66 station opened by N. H. “Bud” Rice in 1928.
Cubero, bypassed in 1937, is located just a few miles north of Highway 124, the replacement alignment of Route 66. Its association with Route 66 is a long one, spawning one of the old road's iconic landmarks and forever linking its story to that of the historic highway.
During the teens and early twenties, automobile tourists flocked to the desert southwest to take in the wondrous lands and strange cultures. Old trading posts and new ones capitalized on this new opportunity for profit.
In Cubero, Wallace and Mary Gunn operated one of these trading posts and kept up a thriving business by providing local Indians with goods like flour and coal oil in exchange for pottery, sheep, cattle, and an array of work created by Indian artisans. In turn, these goods were sold to tourists.
Shortly after the realignment of Route 66, the Gunns relocated their business to a new facility on the highway. By the summer of 1937, in partnership with Sidney Gottieb, the new trading post had morphed into Villa de Cubero Trading Post, a complex that included the trading post, a service station, and ten tourist courts.
The facility received a favorable rating by AAA and inclusion in the 1940
Directory of Motor Courts and Cottages
: “Villa de Cubero, on U.S. 66, 10 cottages with baths, $2 to $3. Public showers. Café. Trailers 50c.”
Hollywood discovered the charming village of Cubero and its trading post during this period, and soon the Villa de Cubero was a popular place for celebrities seeking a hidden hideaway or a pleasant stay while filming in the area. The surprising guest list included Gene Tierney, Bruce Cabot, the Von Trapp family, and Sylvia Sidney. Vivian Vance owned a ranch nearby, and Desi and Lucy Arnaz were regulars during the early 1950s. Another brush with fame came with Ernest Hemmingway, who resided here for two weeks, purportedly while working on
The Old Man and the Sea
.
Settlement at San Fidel nearby began with the establishment of a small farm by Baltazar Jaramillo and his family in 1868. In time, the isolated farm became a small community, and in 1919, a post office opened.
Jack Rittenhouse notes that the population in 1946 was listed as 128 and that the town consisted of a café, a garage, a couple of stores, and a curio shop. He also notes that the town had “declined somewhat.”
Today, the word
declined
is an apt descriptor for San Fidel. The village consists of a small chapel, an art gallery in an old building, a bar, and a tumbledown garage. Just west of town are the remains of a former Whiting Brothers station.
