Route 66 Turns 100 Years Old This Year. I Visited Its Ghost Towns.

Glenrio is one of the best-preserved ghost towns from the mid-1900s in the United States. It sits right along Route 66 and straddles the border between Texas and New Mexico.

The town was never huge, peaking at 100 people.

Beginning in the early 1900s, it was a robust railroad community, with multiple grocery stores, a post office, and service stations.

Then, it became a haven for drivers fleeing the Dust Bowl and braving Route 66 through the desert.

Today, abandoned buildings dot the town.

Crossing over the interstate, we arrived at the main stretch of Route 66 through Glenrio.

This was once a bustling corridor along the state line. Texas had lower gas prices than New Mexico, so stations were built on the Lone Star side of the border.

In the 1970s, Interstate 40 bypassed Route 66 and this town. Travelers stopped coming by, and virtually overnight, this town dried up.

What’s left of it is overwhelmed in eerie silence. The former Texaco and the 1969 Pontiac Catalina out front sit unmoving, riddled with rust.

Brownlee’s daughter is the only remaining resident of Glenrio. Her husband was killed during a robbery while working in the neighboring town. That’s the 1969 Pontiac Catalina that he drove to work every day.

I could only imagine how cozy the chrome details and the small footprint of the diner would’ve felt after a long drive in the 1950s.

After a short stint as an antique and oddities shop, the diner permanently closed in the 1970s.

On one side, it reads “Last Stop in Texas.” The verbiage added to the ominous feeling lingering in this place.

Texas had many dry counties at the time, but this part of New Mexico allowed alcohol. So the motels and bars were cleverly built on the New Mexico side of the border, and loads of folks came here to drink.

Just like the diner next door, the motel closed in the 1970s.

The only thing left standing in this town is a new smoke shop that opened in 2023.

Just like in the days of dry counties, it’s on the border for a reason. Recreational marijuana is still illegal in Texas, but it’s been legal in New Mexico, where the shop sits, since 2021.

I asked Harrah, the shop’s general manager, what it’s like to work in a town that essentially doesn’t exist.

“Time doesn’t exist either here. Texas is in Central, and New Mexico is in Mountain [time]. So it’s an hour difference depending on where you are. And then it’s exit zero. So it’s really just its own entity, its own energy, its own everything,” she said.

The ghost stations of Glenrio were far from the only boarded-up gas pumps we came across on our road trip down Route 66 from Amarillo, Texas, to Tucumcari, New Mexico.

The construction of the interstate hurt the economies of the other towns along this section of the old road, too.

The station was originally named Tommy’s Cafe and Phillips 66.

When we finally arrived in Tucumcari, New Mexico, where we planned to stay the night, I thought the haunting, empty buildings along Route 66 were behind us. Tucumcari is, I figured, a much bigger town.

But I was wrong.

So many neon lights were dark here.

But unlike Glenrio, there are actually people left living in Tucumcari who’ve had to witness the change.

At night, we were filming one of the town’s last neon signs when a beautiful blue car drove by.

We flagged him down and met Rocky Chavez, a lifetime resident of Tucumcari. I joined him in his 1966 Chevy Impala, cruising down Route 66. Over the roar of his engine, he told me all about how the town used to be.

“Back in the heyday, this whole town was nothing but neon lights. It was so beautiful, every business was open. We had 2,000 motel rooms. We had 36 gas stations. We had like 32 restaurants,” he said.

“There were almost 20,000 people at one time here. We had the railroad, the trucking companies, Levi Strauss used to be here,” Chavez said. “Driving down this boulevard when I grew up here was so full of life. Now, you pass, and all the buildings are boarded up. There’s nothing left.”

There’s something poetic about graffiti giving them new life and weeds transforming them once again.

The mere fact that they’re still standing in any form means they haven’t been forgotten.

They can’t be. They’re forceful reminders of this route through American history. And as I drove down Route 66, it felt like I was driving through a living museum.

I can’t help but think about the family who spent their lives keeping these businesses open, only for them to fall into disrepair.

What would they think now? Would they, like Chavez, be quiet, lost in thought, as they speed by what little is left? Maybe in that way, they’re cruel reminders of what was and likely will never be again.

While those rusted-out hot rods and boarded-up buildings still haunt me, I have settled on a semblance of optimism as I think back on this road trip.

We came across so many people who are still fighting to keep this stretch of cement alive. And to each person I asked, “Why should people care about Route 66?”

One woman told me, “People think it’s just a road, but it’s not. It’s the path to people.

And the more I drove, the more I realized she was right.

Rob Federico and his wife, Dawn, drove down Route 66 until they ran out of gas in Tucumcari. They bought the motorcourt in 2020. They welcomed me with open arms and a killer cup of coffee.

In the end, it was less about the ghost gas station in Tucumcari and more about Chavez, who’d picked up a weary journalist and given her the cruise of a lifetime.