by Jim Hinckley
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 Youth—Old 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
THE 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.
Correo is located south of Interstate 40 at exit 126. The remainder of the towns in this section are on old U.S. 66 on the north side of Interstate 40, accessed at exit 117.
Hidden Gems
An array of vintage Route 66 remnants peppers the old road from San Fidel to the Arizona state line. In the old mining town of Grants, the darkened neon of the Franciscan Lodge and the Lux Theater, and the refurbished sign at the Grants Café, all hint of a time when travelers on the double six were as important to the economy as uranium from area mines.
Prewitt, Thoreau, Iyanbitoall, and Manuelito have long and colorful histories, but Route 66 literally placed these isolated trading posts on the map. Jack Rittenhouse, in his 1946 guidebook, notes that Prewitt was “A small community, including several railroad siding shacks and Prewitt’s Trading Post. Gas station here. No tourist accommodations in Prewitt.”
Of Thoreau, Rittenhouse says, “Thoreau Trading Post and Beautiful Mountain Trading Post here; gas and garage. Thoreau itself lies off of US 66.” Interestingly, this description is quite similar to that given in the 1927 edition of Hotel, Garage, Service Station, and AAA Directory.
In Thoreau today, the Red Mountain Market and Deli masks—through a series of additions and an updated façade—a tangible link to the very infancy of Route 66: Johnnies Café. The café dates to the late 1920s and was initially little more than a twenty-by-forty-foot shed with a wood-burning stove
for cooking and heating water, a counter with a couple of stools, and four small tables.
An interesting historic footnote is found in Herman’s Garage at the junction with Highway 371, the road to Thoreau. Erected in Gallup in 1931, this prefabricated, steel-frame service station was moved to its present location in the mid-1930s.
Today, ruins, faded murals, and other ghostly remnants are the dominant features of this stretch of highway. Against the backdrop of beautiful Western landscapes, these appear as sets in a photographer’s paradise.
Prices stuck at thirty-one cents per gallon on a pump in Thoreau provide an excellent reference point for when the last car stopped at the station.
Herman’s Garage hints that in quiet Thoreau, the curtain between past and present is a very thin veil.
ARIZONA
The Two Guns mural may be a re-creation, but it is an apt monument to one of the most enduring legends on Route 66.
The beautiful Canyon Diablo Bridge gave rise to the quintessential Route 66 tourist stop that was Two Guns.
THE GHOST TOWNS OF ROUTE 66 in the Grand Canyon State are a diverse lot of mining camps and railroad towns, rough-and-tumble cattle towns and tourism meccas, with two lanes of asphalt linking them all.
With Flagstaff as a median, the ghost towns in the eastern part of the state are largely the remnants of trading posts turned highway service centers. These, as well as the ruins of tourism outposts, such as the isolated Painted Desert Trading Post, are a photographer’s paradise because each is framed by truly stunning Western landscapes.
In the western half of the state, you will find the longest uninterrupted stretch of Route 66 in existence. This time capsule section of the highway—peppered with the steepest grades, the sharpest curves, and quintessential Western ghost towns—features tangible remnants of every era of this road’s history and its predecessors, the Beale Wagon Road and the National Old Trails Highway. Here you will also find icons of the modern era of resurgent interest.
GHOSTS OF THE PAINTED DESERT
ROUTE 66 FROM THE NEW MEXICO state line to Flagstaff is a broken ribbon of asphalt through some of the most breathtaking landscapes in the Southwest. This is the land of the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest, of Canyon Diablo and Meteor Crater.
The ghost towns and empty trading posts dot the old roadside as it winds through the colorful sands and through the shadows of looming buttes.
Lupton, located just inside the state line, had a population of thirty-three in 1946 and was the location for the state point of entry inspection station. The post office was established here in 1917, and Jack Rittenhouse notes in 1946 that the town consisted of “gas stations; store; no other facilities.”
This “gas station” and “store” were part of the Indian Trail Trading Post established by Max and Amelia Ortega. In 1965, the completion of Interstate 40 to Lupton resulted in the razing of the facility, and today the site is an access road to a rest stop.
Allantown, the next town to the west, never really became a town and, in 1946, consisted solely of Stafford’s Café. The café also served as a gas station, grocery store, and gift shop. Rittenhouse notes that, from Allantown, “the trees become more sparse, and you begin to enter a stretch of over 125 miles of almost barren country.” This “barren country” is a stark but multi-hued plain dotted with colorful spires of stone and ridges of stone that appear in the red-tinged soil as the bleached bones of the earth itself, where high winds, especially in the months of winter, often result in the closure of Interstate 40.
Lupton may never have been much more than a wide spot in the road, but there was a time when the steady hum of traffic past town never quieted. Joe Sonderman collection
Early tourists expected the Wild West when they reached the Arizona border, and the proprietors of the trading post in Houck did not disappoint them. Joe Sonderman collection
Houck is the oldest of these forlorn outposts of civilization, dating to the construction of a trading post by James D. Houck in 1877. The first incarnation of modernity was the establishment of Houcks Tank post office in December 1884, three years after the railroad established a siding and section house at the site.
In 1895, an application for the renaming of the post office as “Houcks” was submitted, and it was under this name that it remained open until 1930. The Navajos lounging around the trading post drinking soda pop fascinated Jack Rittenhouse on his 1946 visit.
The Log Cabin Trading Post capitalized on its territorial origins to give travelers on the National Old Trails Highway and Route 66 a taste of the Old West. Joe Sonderman collection
Today, all three communities are known for their collection of vintage tourist traps rather than their frontier-era origins. Counted among the most famous of these “trading posts” are Ortega’s, Fort Courage, and the Chief Yellowhorse.
Sanders was, and is, the first town of any size in Arizona for travelers headed west on Route 66. Rittenhouse notes it had a population of eighty-eight in 1946, serviced by the Tipton Brothers Trading Post and two gas stations.
Surprisingly, this dusty little oasis houses a number of fascinating Route 66 survivors that are often missed by modern visitors. These include the bridge over the Rio Puerco River, constructed in 1923 east of town, and the classic Valentine Diner in the “business district.”
The little diner, relocated from Holbrook and ingenuously mated with a house trailer, is truly one of a kind. Even on Route 66, where ingenuity reigns supreme, this café is unique.
Travel notes from a 1921 tour guide describe Sanders as follows: “On the main A. T. & S. F. R. R. about 20 miles west of New Mexico line. First called Sanders, for C.W. Sanders, office engineer, A.T. & S. F. R. R. Changed to Cheto because of another Sanders station on Santa Fe.” This did not keep Art Sanders, owner of the trading post, from claiming he was the town’s namesake.
Lupton is accessed via exit 359 on Interstate 40, Houck at exit 348, and both Sanders and Chambers from exit 339.
As with Houck, the need for a post office in Sanders was not consistent. The post office opened in 1896 under the name Cheto, then closed a few years later. It reopened in 1932 as Sanders.
Rittenhouse said of Chambers that it “Consists of one small tourist court, 2 gas stations, Riggs café, and a few buildings.” And this little desert oasis was not immune to conflicted identity.
Charles Chambers established a trading post on the site in the mid-1870s, but the little station and siding was named after Edward Chambers, vice president of the Santa Fe Railroad, not the trading post owner. It was under Edward Chambers’ name that the first post office opened in 1907 with Frank L. Hathorne as postmaster.
In 1926, the approval of a new application made it official: Chambers changed its name to Halloysite, after a mineral mined in the area. The name change was short-lived, though, and in 1930 a new postal application restored the original moniker of Chambers.
Early maps indicate several small towns perched on Route 66 as the original highway climbed into the Techni-color wonderland that is the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest, but in actuality, Navajo, Adamana, and Goodwater never were more than trading posts that offered the most basic of services. Likewise with the “towns” listed between Holbrook and Flagstaff. Of the exceptions, Winona and Winslow were the only ones to warrant a post office.
In his classic Route 66 anthem, Bobby Troup elevated tiny Winona to levels far higher than its importance or size warranted. It never did cast a very large shadow on that historic highway. Established as a siding in 1886 under the name Walnut, the name changed the following year to avoid duplication of another town, and around 1920, the small community was abandoned and the trading post relocated to its present spot along the realigned National Old Trails Highway.
Rittenhouse lists the Winona Trading Post, with its café, gas station, grocery store, and cabins, as occupying the lion’s share of Winona. It was here in 1924 that the post office was established.
Two Guns and Canyon Diablo
Two Guns is an iconic Route 66 location with a reputation carefully crafted for tourists during the glory days of the old double six. The original establishment capitalized on the stunning majesty of Canyon Diablo—which was still spanned by a beautiful concrete bridge built for the National Old Trails Highway—and the legend of “Two Guns” Miller.
A colorful character, Miller claimed to be an Apache. Legend has it that he killed a neighbor who shared the canyon, was acquitted when the jury ruled the act self-defense, and then went to jail for defacing the grave after a fit of anger led him to erase the epitaph “Killed by Indian Miller.” The Two Guns attraction evolved over the years to include a zoo with desert animals, a variety of manmade “ruins” built into the canyon walls, and Miller’s cave.
Ironically, few tourists who stopped to see Two Guns realized that just to the north was a real Western ghost town, called Canyon Diablo, with a very violent history. Canyon Diablo began life in 1881 as a railroad construction camp for the bridging of the chasm. The camp grew into a small collection of bordellos and saloons with a well-deserved reputation for lawlessness. The town became a haven for unruly elements of society. Not surprisingly, there were numerous gunfights and at least two train robberies, plus the staging of an amazing three-week, six-hundred-mile chase of robbery suspects led by Bucky O’Neill, a larger-than-life figure who met his end as a Rough Rider in the Spanish-American War.
