Life is a Journey: A Ghost Town

After staying last night in the KOA in Tucumcari, NM we continued east on I40 and into the panhandle of Texas. I had done a little reading on the internet about Route 66 and had read that there was a ghost town just off of I40 at exit 0. It didn't give any information about the town and I pictured it as a southwest cowboy type ghost town and thought that would be neat to see.

We got to exit 0 and took it. It didn't say which way to go off the exit so when we got to the stop sign we looked to the north which was open country and didn't see anything that way so we turned south. In a short distance we were surprised to come to a section of old Route 66 and looking to the right we could see an abandoned small town. My minds eye picture of a ghost town suddenly changed from an old west ghost town to what was a late 50's ghost town. How times do change: stagecoaches and horses giving way to hardpacked, graveled dirt roads traveled by early autos giving way to a paved national highway (Rte 66), giving way to Interstate superslabs. Each time bypassing the old and creating new opportunities. Now there are McDonald's and Cracker Barrels and giant gas depots replacing the family cafes and small but full service gas stations with large overhangs supported by a couple of posts and a couple of as pumps underneath. Do you think that someday the superslab and Cracker Barrels will be abandoned? Quite possibly and history does repeat itself!

Back to the ghost town. There appeared to be maybe 5 miles or so of old Rte 66 that has been maintained but has become an integral part of an access road that runs parallel to some distance to I40, probably on the same roadbed as Rte 66. There appeared to be a relatively new town sign identifying the ghost town as Glenrio, Texas. There were a few houses off to the south which I suspect still have a Glenrio address. In front of one of the smaller abandoned buildings was a set of about six or eight mailboxes. I suspect that the building may have been the Glenrio post office at one time.

Below is an old abandoned gas station. Can't you just imagine busy highway 66 in front and cars pulling in for service or a bag of ice and making sure that they had enough gas to get to Tucumcari heading west.