The Land Of Dates, part 2

I will now quote from "The Old U.S. 80 Highway Traveler's Guide, Phoenix to San Diego," by Eric J. Finley for information about Dateland's name.
  "The town's name (on some older maps as 'Datelan'), comes from a grove of of date trees to which a Mrs. William Harrison tended in the 1930s. She built a home and work buildings here, but they are gone."
  "In February of 1994, a Montana investor purchased the entire site for $400,000. upon making the purchase at an auction held in town, the gentleman stated the he probably would make inprovements to the aging desert hamlet so that it could start turning a profit from passersby on the interstate."
  The first time I was ever in Dateland, in approximately 1993, it was essentially a ghost town. The convenience stores were not there and everything on Old Highway 80 was abandoned and desolate. I am not sure what was north of the interstate back then because I did not venture up that way, but it was little, if anything. Just about everything that is north of the freeway now is of a more recent vintage. 
  Dateland, in its original incarnation, was not much more than "a wide spot in the road" that most likely never had more than about 100 people, after the old Army Airfield closed. It basically just served travelers on U.S. Highway 80. I doubt the population was much more than just the employees of the few businesses that were in the town.  At any rate, these businesses that were located in the old Dateland must have been a welcome sight to travelers in the hot summer months in an area that routinely has temperatures of 120 degrees or more for about 3 to 4 weeks of each year. 
 The convenience stores today do a brisk business because they are the only services for about 30 miles towards the west and about 50 miles towards the east.
  There are still alot of date palm trees in Dateland, reinforcing the town's name. They are all planted, of course, because the only wild palms in Arizona grow in Palm Canyon in the northern part of Yuma County.

The Land Of Dates

  Dateland is a town that has moved slightly north since Interstate 8 supplanted U.S. Highway 80.
  With one exception, everything along Old Highway 80 is either abandoned or demolished. The first time I was ever in Dateland, in the early 1990s, there was an abandoned
gas station/store/cafe/ gift shop/post office combination at the intersection of Old Highway 80 and Avenue 64E (crazy road numbering system in Yuma County, but it indicates that it is 64 miles from Main Street in Yuma and it is east of Main Street). The Postal Service decal was still affixed to the window of the old post office the first time I saw this complex. This complex was demolished in 1997. There is still a post office in Dateland, but at another location.
  Next to the site of the old business complex is a big, rectangular concrete slab that is lined on 3 sides with date palm trees that were planted as part of a landscaping project. It looks like a motel used to be located here, but I'm not sure. The buildings could have been located along the outer edge of the slab and the parking area was concrete instead of asphalt. It could have been something else, but a motel is the most likely explanation. Just to the west of the concrete slab lined with palm trees is an RV park that I believe is only occupied during the winter months when
"Snowbirds," or retirees from colder climates descend on this area and increase the population significantly for about five months of the year. Beyond the RV park, it looks like little, if anything, was ever located here and, in fact, Old Highway 80 dead-ends about one mile west of Dateland when it runs into the embankment of Interstate 8. In that area, the interstate was built directly on top of the old highway.
  East of the old business complex, across the county road, is just vacant land, but there is some surface debris that indicates buildings used to be located there.  
  About 1/4 mile north of the old business complex is the heart of modern Dateland. There are 2 convenience stores at the interchange of Interstate 8 and County Road 64E. One is on the southeast corner and one on the southwest corner. They are both pretty big but the one on the SE corner is actually a truck stop. It is called the Dateland Travel Center and they sell date shakes. Shakes made from dates from the palm trees in the area. The shakes are pretty good, too. They also serve things like date pies, date bread, etc. There is a very good restaurant in this truck stop, also.
  The bulk of the town spreads out north of the interstate for 2 1/2 miles and includes an airport that was once the Dateland Army Airfield. There is an elementary school with about 250 students  a short distance north if the interstate. Middle school and high school students are bussed 30 miles west to Antelope High School and Antelope Middle School halfway between Tacna and Wellton.

West To Dateland

  From the ghost town of Aztec, there is a 6 mile segment of Old U.S. Highway 80 that parallels Interstate 8 on the south. I have driven this stretch several times, and it is a much more peaceful drive than the interstate, which closely parallels the old highway. It is a little rough in spots, but it is very driveable in a passenger car. For four of these six miles, there is an even older alignment paralleling Old Highway 80 on the south, between the highway and the railroad tracks. I am undecided about whether or not highway 80 was a 4-lane, divided highway for  4 miles, or if it was just re-routed slightly to the north. It seems unlikely that it would have just been re-routed a few feet to the north for 4 miles with the distance between the westbound lanes and eastbound lanes being the exactly the width one would find in a typical median strip on a divided highway, but why would it only be a divided highway for 4 miles? Were there plans to make it a divided highway for a much longer distance but the plans were interrupted by the construction of the interstate? Also, if highway crew were in the process of turning it into a divided highway, why not start from Yuma instead of one mile east of Dateland in a remote area?   At any rate, it looks like it was a divided highway for these 4 miles and that is the assumption I am going on until I find out otherwise.
  That being said, the more southerly alignment, what I believe were the eastbound lanes of the divided highway, is now completely abandoned and is partially overgrown by weeds and grass. The former westbound lanes now carry two-way traffic. The bridges over washes, or dry streambeds, are still intact. It is now a county-maintained road. 
  One mile east of Dateland, the abandoned alignment ends and Old Highway 80 becomes a typical two-lane highway with wide shoulders.
  Dateland, Arizona has a population of 440 people, which is a slight decrease from the 2000 Census when it had 482 people. Dateland is also at an elevation of 440 feet above sea level, so the population and elevation match. The 440 foot elevation makes Dateland the highest town in Yuma County. The highest point in Yuma County, Signal Peak, is 4,877 feet above sea level. It is on the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge.

Signs Of The Past

I guess I will start my tour of Yuma County at the eastern border, on Interstate 8, the "main drag" of Yuma County. The eastern border of the county is near milepost #81, which means it is 81 miles from the point where the interstate crosses the Colorado River into California. However, that is not the widest part of the county. From the farthest reach of the county, north of San Luis, it is a distance of 92 miles from the eastern border.
  The eastern border of Yuma County is a long, continuous line that runs for approximately 300 miles from the border with Mexico to the southernmost reach of the Colorado River when it flows through the Grand Canyon. This southernmost reach of the Grand Canyon has Grand Canyon National Park on one side of the river and the Hualapai Indian Reservation on the other side. This is the far, western end of the canyon that few people see. This long, continuous line separates Yuma, La Paz and Mohave Counties on the west and Pima, Maricopa, Yavapai and Coconino Counties on the east.
  Back to the hot sands of Yuma County. Most maps show a town called Aztec in the far eastern part of the county, but Aztec is a ghost town. The townsite is marked by a square canopy that used to cover gas pumps. This ghost of the desert sits forlornly by the side of a busy freeway. There is only a concrete slab to mark the site of the gas station's building. There are a few other concrete slabs, foundations and some debris scattered  along the road north of the interstate. It doesn't appear that Aztec ever had much of a population. It was most likely just a gas stop and probably had a couple other tourist related businesses to serve travelers on U.S. Highway 80 and its replacement, Interstate 8. I doubt Aztec ever had more than 40 or 50 people.
  Six miles west of Aztec is Dateland. Dateland has a unique tourist attraction that I will mention in the next installment of this blog. 
  

Yuma County, part 2

 While Yuma County has very few roads, it still has more than 200,000 people. It is a very concentrated population located on or near the two rivers that flow through the county, the Colorado and the Gila. Outside of these areas, the population is pretty close to 0. There is probably the lone dwelling in the desert in various places, but it is mostly an uninhabited land with a sprinkling of short-lived ghost towns.
  The majority of this unpopulated land is owned by the federal government. The biggest of these areas is the Barry Goldwater Air Force Bombing Range. There is also the Yuma Proving Ground. 
 In addition, there are three national wildlfe refuges in Yuma County. There is the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, which is the location of the aforementioned Palm Canyon. There is also Imperial National Wildlife Refuge, on the Colorago River north of Yuma and, lastly, there is the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge on the border with Mexico in the southeast part of the county. Cabeza Prieta is one of the most isolated and least known areas in the United States. There have
 never been any towns located in this area and no evidence of any aboriginal habitation on a permanent basis. The archaeological evidence suggests that people only passed through this area on their way to somewhere else. This is the location  of El Camino del Diablo, or The Road of Death, that 19th century pioneers took on their way west to California. As the trail's name suggests, many of them died in this harsh, unforgiving land.
  There are also three federally designated wilderness areas located on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land. These are the Trigo Mountains, Muggins Mountains and Eagletail Mountains Wilderness Areas.
  Outside of the settled areas of Yuma County, there are very few roads. Any road that does exist in this area is unpaved. Some of them are maintained, such as the road to Palm Canyon and the roads to the now defunct Castle Dome Mining District and the also abandoned mines in the Kofa Mountains such as the North Star, the Rob Roy and the King of Arizona (better known as the 'Kofa' mine). Any other roads that exist in the county are primitive dirt tracks only negotiable by four wheel drive vehicles.
  There are only four highways in the entire county, three federal and one state. There is Interstate 8; Interstate 8 Business Loop, which is the 'main drag' through Yuma (by far the county's biggest city and the seat of government), U.S. Highway 95 and State Highway 195, which is a new highway that is only a few years old. It is a 4 lane, divided highway that was built to serve as an alternative route from Interstate 8, on the east side of Yuma, to the Mexican border crossing at San Luis. Only four highways in a county with more than 200,000 people! The populated areas also are served by a network of county maintained roads which are mostly paved and then there are also Martinez Lake Road, which runs from highway 95 to Martinez Lake, a distance of 10 miles, and Imperial Dam Road, which runs from highway 95 to the border with California and beyond. It is an alternative route to Yuma if one is coming from the north.
  It is stunning to know how empty, remote and inaccessible most of Yuma County is even though alot of people live in the county.

Yuma County

  When a person gazes at a map of Yuma County, one thing becomes readily apparent, the lack of roads. Nearly all of the roads are concentrated in three areas, the Yuma Valley, which is in the southwest corner of the county below the confluence of the Colorado and Gila Rivers and also in the Mohawk Valley in the central part of the county. These two areas are separated by the Gila Mountains (also called the Fortuna Mountains). The third area is the Dome Valley, which wraps around the north end of the Gila Mountains and connects the other two areas.
  The Yuma Valley is by far the biggest of these areas and it lies along a wide floodplain that was created by the Colorado River. The river has wandered across this flat valley over the eons, carving new channels and abandoning old ones. The old channels are now plowed up and planted with a variety of crops. Looking at an  aerial map of this area will reveal faint swales in the farmland. These swales are ancient channels of the Colorado River.  The silt in this area, laid down by the river over thousands of years, is very deep and very fertile, creating one of the most productive farming areas in the United States.
  The Mohawk Valley is a long, linear area that lies mostly south of the Gila River, which is one of the principal tributaries of the Colorado. The Mohawk Valley is 25 miles long and seven miles at its widest point, but it averages only four miles in width. Interstate 8 and Old U.S. Highway 80, now a county maintained road, are the principal transportation arteries in this area. 
  The Mohawk Valley is also a productive farming area. The soil here was laid down by the Gila River. There are several towns in this area with the largest one being Wellton, which has about 2,000 people.
  The other area that contains most of the county's roads is the Dome Valley, which also lies along the Gila River. This area is narrower than the Mohawk Valley with an average width of only about two miles. There are no towns in this area, but there are quite a few farms.
  East of Mohawk Valley, are the Hyder and San Cristobal Valleys, that  have a much smaller road system and a much smaller population than the Mohawk Valley.  The major town in the San Cristobal Valley is Dateland, which grew up along U.S. Highway 80 and is now a major stop on Interstate 8, serving travelers on a remote stretch of highway. This area also lies along the Gila River. The only town in Hyder Valley is Hyder, which only has a handful of people.
  The only other populated place in Yuma County is Martinez Lake, in the northern part of the county on the Colorado River. I am undecided about whether Martinez Lake is a town or just a remote housing development, but I do know that there is a resort there. At any rate, about 300 people live here year round and several thousand more take up temporary residence during the balmy winter months.
  There are also some residential areas, and roads,  on the property of the Yuma Proving Ground, which is a military base that serves all branches of the military. The Proving Ground has about 3,700 people, from what I can gather.

A Barren Land

The western edge of Arizona, along with the southeast part of California,  and southern Nevada, is the driest part of the United States. This is an extremely harsh desert with an average of only 3 to 4 inches of rain per year. In fact, there is a portion of Death Valley, in California, that only averages 1.6 inches of rain per year! Most of the western edge of Arizona is a nearly naked landscape, only occupied by the hardiest, most drought-resistant plants. In fact, Yuma, in southwestern Arizona, only averages 2.88 inches of rainfall per year and San Luis, 25 miles south of Yuma, on the border with Mexico, probably averages less than that, but I have not found statistics for that town. I am guessing San Luis averages about 2.7 inches of rain per year.
  Yuma County is the second driest county in the United States.  The eastern edge of  county, the "wettest" part, still only gets about 6 inches per year. The only county that is drier is its neighbor to the west, Imperial County, in California.
  Even the mountains of this area support very little in the way of vegetation. Their slopes, with a few exceptions such as Palm Canyon, are almost completely barren and, in many places, they are completely barren. 
  Yuma County covers an area of 5,518 square miles, so it is a big county by the standards of most states, but not by Arizona standards. Arizona, the nation's sixth largest state, only has 15 counties. The counties in Arizona are way too big, for the most part, and many of them need to be divided into smaller units.   
  Before  1983, Yuma County was nearly twice the size that it is now. The northern 45% of the county split off and formed La Paz County. This new county became official on January 1, 1983. I will talk more in depth about La Paz County in the future. For now, my topic is Yuma County.

 

Wild Palms Of The Kofas

  Fifty-five miles north of Yuma, in the southwestern part of Arizona, is a turnoff to an unusual biome for Arizona. After one turns east off of U.S. Highway 95, it is nine miles of dirt road to Palm Canyon, which is located in the western facade of the Kofa Mountains. The first five miles of this dirt road are in good to decent condition. Then the road then enters the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge for its final run to its dead-end. This four mile stretch within the wildlife refuge is a slow going affair because the road is extremely washboarded. The bone-jarring drive is well worth it because, at roads end, is the only place in Arizona where palm trees grow in the wild.  Cities such as Phoenix, Mesa, Tucson and Yuma have lots of palm trees lining the streets, but they were all imported and planted in beautification efforts. The palm trees in Palm Canyon are growing in the wild and they are even thriving. The older, more mature trees are twenty to thirty feet tall with the tallest one being thirty-seven feet tall, I believe.
 These palm trees are rather dimunitive in stature compared to palm trees elsewhere, but they are doing quite well in their secluded location. Palm Canyon is nearly vertical and the trees grow in a sort of stairstep fashion. All but one or two of these trees grow on the sunny, south-facing wall of the canyon.
  This species of palm tree is called the California Fan Palm and its scientific name is Washingtonia filiferia. They grow in scattered locations in California and in Baja California, in Mexico, but they only grow in this one location in Arizona. Most likely, the seeds which gave rise to these anomalous palm trees were dropped by birds that happened to be flying over the area. Perhaps the seeds landed in this area after being blown about by incessant winds. Who knows? 
  I once spent a very peaceful night camping in this area but I had to be prepared because there are no services whatsoever in the area. The nearest town is Quartzsite, 35 miles away. I camped in January, which is the perfect time to camp in this area, because it is blazing hot for the majority of the year. It is one of the most memorable camping experiences I have ever had and, if I ever work up the nerve and do the necessary preparations, I have always wanted to spend about a week completely by myself and completely removed from society and, if I ever do this (doubtful at this point), this is the area that I want to do it in.

Dowa Yalanne

  Dowa Yalanne, also known as Corn Mountain, is sacred to the Zuni Tribe and the centerpiece of the Zuni Reservation. It is a flat topped mesa and its highest point is 7,235 feet above sea level . Although its summit is only about 800 feet above the surrounded high desert floor, it is an imposing mountain nevertheless.
  When Spanish explorer Coronado attacked the Zuni people in the 1500s, the residents of the pueblo took refuge on top of Dowa Yalanne. Today, the Zuni people maintain shrines on the mesa's flat top and a Zuni legend says that the mountain  is the "House of the Gods"  and rain, lightning and thunder are made here. For this reason, people sometimes call it Thunder Mountain. I have seen, on many occasions, a storm just sitting on this mountain, completely engulfing it, while blue skies dominated the surrounding area. It was a surreal scene. The name "Dowa Yalanne" is sometimes written as "Taaiyalone."
  The prinicpal town on the Zuni Reservation is Zuni Pueblo, which has about 6,800 people. A drive around Zuni Pueblo is definitely a step back in time to a simpler era. Most of the mud-brick houses have an "horno," or beehive-shaped adobe oven in the yard. Every time I am in Zuni Pueblo, I almost get the feeling that I am in South America. At least it is my perception of South America must be like.
  Although there is some modern development in Zuni Pueblo and on the Zuni Reservation, there is very little. The Zuni people are very traditional and have done a better job of preserving their culture than most indigenous tribes have done. That is one of the things I love about the Zuni Reservation.
  Just two miles east of Zuni Pueblo is Black Rock, which has about 1,000 people. It is a modern town with modern-looking housing developments. The houses all have a terra cotta exterior, however. The reservation hospital is located in Black Rock.  
  Many historians believe the Zuni Reservation to be the supposed location of the "Seven Cities of Cibola" or "Seven Cities of Gold," that enticed the 16th century Spanish explorers in their quixotic search for riches.  

The Land Of The Zuni

The Zuni Indian Reservation lies on the western edge of New Mexico. The western boundary of the reservation is at the Arizona border. There are also two, small, non-contiguous segments in Arizona, in Apache County, northwest of St. Johns. These two, small areas are about 30 miles southwest of the main reservation in New Mexico. The smaller of these two, disjunct parcels, is bisected by U.S. Highway 180 and is only about 200 acres in size. The other, unattached portion of the Zuni Reservation is about one mile north of the small section I just mentioned. This area is not on a highway and is only accessible by a primitive, dirt track. This area is bisected by the Zuni River and the Little Colorado River. I have heard that this area is extremely sacred to the Zuni Tribe. North Mountain and South Mountain lie at opposite ends of this piece of the Zuni Reservation. The Zuni River flows between the two mountains and the Little Colorado flows south of South Mountain. About three miles west of this scetion are is the point where the two rivers converge. This section of the reservation is roughly six miles long and three miles wide.
  The main reservation, in New Mexico, is also bisected by the Zuni River. The Zuni River begins in the eastern part of the reservation at the confluence of the Rio Pescado (Fish River in English) and Rio Nutria
(Beaver River). I believe that the Rio Pescado is the principal stream here and is actually the upper reaches of the Zuni River, but known by a different name. The Rio Pescado is longer than the Rio Nutria, so that is why I believe it to the the main stream. The Zuni River is extremely sacred to the Zuni Tribe and flows through the heart of Zuni Pueblo, the reservation's biggest town and the reservation capital. The river also flows along the southern edge of Black Rock, the second biggest town on the reservation and just one mile east of Zuni Pueblo.  These two towns contain the majority of the Zuni Indian Reservation's population.  The other towns on the Zuni Reservation are Pescado, Upper Nutria, Lower Nutria and Ojo Caliente, but they are merely villages with only a handful of people.

A:Shiwi A:Wan

  A:Shiwi A:Wan is what the Zuni people call themselves, in their language. The Zuni Tribe is considered to be one of the Pueblo Tribes that live in much of northern and western New Mexico, and yet, their language differs from all the others. The Zuni language is not classified into any language group and is considered to be an isolated language. It is not compared with any other language. Much of the language is still unwritten. In other words, it is mostly a spoken language. However, some of the tribal members are taking steps to convert the spoken portion of the language into written form.
  The other Pueblo languages are called Tiwa (or Tigua), Tewa and Towa, with Towa being the least common. The Hopi Tribe of Arizona is also considered to be a Pueblo Tribe and they are closely related to the Zuni. Many Zuni surnames and place names I have seen bear a striking resemblance to Hopi names.
  Of all of the Indian Reservations I have visited, the Zuni Reservation is one of my favorites. The Zuni are a very traditional people that cling tenaciously to the ways of their ancestors. I guess all Indian tribes are traditional, but the Zuni are even more traditional than others that I have seen or even read about. I have long had an inner desire to spend a few months doing humanitarian work on an Indian Reservation and, every time I think about this, the Zuni Reservation always comes to the forefront along with the Hopi, Pascua Yaqui and
Tohono O'odham Reservations in Arizona; Laguna, Acoma, Sandia and Isleta Reservations in New Mexico; the various Sioux Reservations in North and South Dakota; the Ysleta del Sur Reservation in Texas and a smattering of other Indian Reservations that I have researched. I guess I would also have to include the Navajo Indian Reservation, which covers parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, on that list since I have alot of Navajo friends and I have spent alot of time on the Navajo Reservation simply because it is so big
(about 27,000 square miles) that it is hard to travel anywhere in northern Arizona without going through at least a portion of Navajoland.

Abandoned and Forlorn

Ramah is a neat and tidy little town that I absolutely love! Mormon towns that I have been to usually have a neat and orderly look to them. A drive around Ramah will reveal pleasant, tree-lined residential streets and well cared for homes and yards. It is sort of an anomaly in this part of New Mexico in which the majority of the area's towns have a "rough-and-tumble" appearance to them.
  On my most recent visit to Ramah, I noticed a new high school, actually a combination high school and middle school, had been built. I am not sure how old it is, but it was built after 2003, my last visit. The football stadium next to it predates the high school by a few years. The current Mustang Stadium opened for the fall 2002 football season.  It was built at the foot of a mesa a mile south of town next to a dirt road. The last time I was in Ramah, I saw the new stadium. It took me awhile to find it because I had assumed it was built in town, but, finally, I saw the light poles of the new stadium and drove towards them.
 After this stadium was built, the old stadium in town became a practice field. When the Ramah Mustangs played in the old stadium, they had to play in the afternoon because it didn't have any lights. Also, at the time, the Mustangs played 6-man football instead of the conventional 11-man  game. In New Mexico, 6-man football is for schools with 75 students or less. A 6-man football field is shorter and narrower than a regular football field. A regular football field is 100 yards long and 53 yards wide. A 6-man football field is only 80 yards long and 40 yards wide. When it came time to make the move up to 11-man football, there was no room to lengthen or widen the field in the old stadium. It was designed for 6-man football and there was no room for expansion, so a new stadium was built. The old stadium only had stands on one side of the field because, on the other side, there is only about five feet of space between the sideline and the chain link fence that parallels the street, barely enough room for the team to stand. The current stadium is also one-sided, meaning it only has stands on one side, but it was designed that way. There is room to put stands on the other side, but the scoreboard would have to be moved if they do.
  In November of 2001, I watched the last game played in the old Mustang Stadium and it was a classic! It was the state championship game for 6-man football and the Ramah Mustangs beat the
Lake Arthur Panthers 101-76!  6-man football has a tendency to get extremely high scoring although breaking 100 points is not very common. Since I lived in Arizona at the time and Ramah is only about 35 miles from the Arizona border and I am a sports nut (college and high school sports), I decided to attend the game. I spent that night in a motel in Gallup, about 50 miles northwest of Ramah.
  On my most recent trip to Ramah about three weeks ago, I  noticed that the old high school is just sitting there abandoned. It seems like such a waste that it is just sitting there abandoned like that. Seems like they could at least use it for a middle school. The tennis courts now have knee-high weeds growing up through cracks in the surface. For the most part, the tennis courts seem to be in playable condition. The old football stadium is just sitting there, abandoned and forlorn. Even after it became simply a practice field, the grandstands and scoreboard were left in place. I don't know what the reason for this was, but, when I was in Ramah recently, I noticed that the grandstands are scoreboard are still standing, ten years after the last game was played in the stadium. The old Mustang Stadium has recently taken on an abandoned and forlorn appearance. There is a tree growing up through the metal bleachers now, finding its way to sunlight by twisting and turning between two rows of bleachers. Another small tree, or sapling, has taken root on the football field, near midfield. Both trees are growing in silence in an abandoned stadium that used to be filled with grunts, cheers and screams on Saturday afternoons in the not-to-distant past. The grass on the former football field is now mostly weeds of several different varieties. I took a few photos of the abandoned stadium, but I was disappointed when I saw them because the shots look like I was farther away than I was. I could not discern the tree growing up through the bleachers of the sapling that has taken root on the football field.
  The parking lot at the old high school is starting to be reclaimed by weeds although the parking space stripes are still readily apparent.  The windows of the school are boarded up. I would like to have taken a peek inside the gym. I am guessing that it is still fully intact, albeit in an unmaintained condition, because of the way the just walked away from the football stadium and tennis courts. I am guessing they just locked the doors and walked away. It is a poignant scene.
  Meanwhile, the gleaming new high school must be about five or six years old, although it looks brand new. Judging by the condition of the field at the old stadium, it is obvious that the team has not practiced on it in quite some time. Also, with the unkempt appearance of the old high school, it is definitely not a recent abandonment.
  The road to the new stadium and new high school is no longer a dirt road. It is now paved, although the pavement ends a short distance south of the current football stadium.

A Little Town In The Vale

  In the western part of New Mexico is a charming little town called Ramah. Ramah is one of the towns that were settled by Mormon pioneers under the direction of Brigham Young in their effort to colonize a "pathway" from Salt Lake City all the way down to Mexico. The Mormon Church settled fifty towns in New Mexico Territory in the 1860s and 1870s. Today, only four of them remain. Ramah is one of them. The other three are located next door to each other just west of Farmington in the northwest corner of the state. They are Kirtland, Fruitland and Waterflow. Kirtland is by far the biggest of these towns with about 6,000 people.
  Ramah was named after a chapter in the Book of Mormon. Although maps tend to show Ramah on an Indian Reservation, it is not. Some maps place it on the Zuni Reservation while other maps place it on the Ramah Navajo Reservation, which is a disjunct portion of the much larger Navajo Indian Reservation that lies mostly in Arizona, but also occupies a considerable part of New Mexico and a smaller portion of Utah. Ramah is located on a small strip that lies between the Ramah Navajo and Zuni Indian Reservations that is four miles wide. This strip is also thirteen miles long, from north to south.  This strip is bounded by the Ramah Navajo and Zuni Reservations on the south, at the point where they two reservations join, and the Cibola National Forest on the north.  One mile east of Ramah is the boundary of the Ramah Navajo Indian Reservation. This point is also the boundary between McKinley and Cibola Counties. Ramah is in McKinley County. McKinley is the poorest county in New Mexico and one of the poorest in the nation. Cibola is also one of New Mexico's poorest counties. I believe it is the fourth poorest, after McKinley, Luna and Guadalupe. 
  The first time I ever went through Ramah was in the mid 1990s and I instantly fell in love with the town! For several years, I made it a point to go through Ramah on my vacations. The first time I went through there was because I wanted to take an alternative route eastward instead of the heavily traveled Interstate 40. After going through Ramah every year for about six or seven years, I did not go through it in the fall of 2002 but then went through there again a year later. However, my recent trip through Ramah was my first visit to the town since 2003, eight years ago.

An Early Highway

There is an east-west street in Tucumcari called Smith Avenue that is the original routing for U.S. Highway 54. At some point in the fairly recent past, the 1980s I think, highway 54 was re-routed one block south to Main Street. This was because an overpass was built on First Street to carry the street over a busy railroad yard. The overpass starts just a few feet north of Main Street, so that means Smith Avenue, or Old Highway 54, has been  chopped into two pieces. 
  For two blocks east of the overpass and three blocks west of the overpass, Smith Avenue still looks like it was once a busy street. It still has concrete, divider islands down the middle and is striped for 4 lanes of traffic with turning lanes at the intersections. The pavement markings are faded, however.
  Two blocks east of the overpass, Smith Avenue no longer looks like it was once a busy highway. Instead, it looks like a typical residential street. I remember once seeing a map of Tucumcari in a phone book that showed highway 54 running along Main Street, but then angling northwest to run along Smith Avenue. The first time I went to Tucumcari, I remember thinking that the highway must have been re-routed recently because I noticed that Smith Avenue dead-ended on both sides of the overpass. The street signs along the street still say "U.S. Highway 54." Two blocks east of the overpass is a city block that is mostly a park, but there is one small building on the east side of the block, a glass company. I am thinking that is where highway 54 used to angle upward from East Main Street to East Smith Avenue.
  What is really strange about this very wide street with no traffic is the way it just dead-ends into a concrete wall on both sides. There is very little reason for the city to continue to maintain the street because the buildings that still line the street are abandoned. The portion of the street west of the overpass was being reconstructed the last time I was in Tucumcari. I am not sure what the plans for it were, but it looked like the concrete, divider islands were being removed.
  This street that once carried alot of traffic, but now carries very little, became imprinted on my mind the first time I saw it because it looked so odd to me. 

Boulevard Of Broken Dreams

    Route 66 through Tucumcari has been known by several names. Originally it was called Gaynell Street, then the name was changed to Tucumcari Boulevard and then the name was changed yet again to Route 66 Boulevard, which is the name it is known by today. However, most of the businesses along the street still use Tucumcari Boulevard for their address.
  By any name, U.S. Highway 66 through Tucumcari was once a very busy thoroughfare. Today, it is lined with abandoned motels, abandoned gas stations, abandoned cafes and empty lots where buildings once stood.
  Tucumcari was once a thriving town of 12,000 people, but now the population is slightly below 5,000. Although Tucumcari has shrunk significantly over the decades, it looks even more forlorn and desolate than it probably would otherwise because the town was overbuilt to begin with. When it was a town of 12,000 people, it had more businesses than most towns of similar size usually did because it was such a thriving stop for motorists on Route 66, as those signs that proclaimed
"Tucumcari tonite  2,000 motel rooms" testified to.
  The last time I was in Tucumcari, I drove the length of Route 66 Boulevard through town, I counted all of the abandoned motels, restaurants and gas stations and wrote them down, but I have been unable to find the list lately. The number of abandoned gas stations was in the 20s and the number of abandoned motels and restaurants was, I believe, in the teens. This is just along Route 66, these numbers do not count other abandoned businesses that are in town on other highways. The western side of Tucumcari is littered with abandoned truck stops.
  Route 66 through Tucumcari was once called the "Little Las Vegas" because of all of the neon signs that once lined the fabled road. Today, there is very little neon along the street because most of the buildings are abandoned.
My first trip to Tucumcari was in 1994 and Route 66 Boulevard (Tucumcari Boulevard at the time), had fallen on hard times, but there was still a decent amount of neon illuminating the street, but that is no longer the case. 
  It is so sad to see what has become of what was once a thriving town. Tucumcari gets more and more rundown and dilapidated every year.

Tucumcari

Tucumcari is the county seat of Quay County and it is located in eastern New Mexico, 40 miles from the Texas border. It is a three hour drive from Albuquerque and a two hour drive from Amarillo, Texas. Motels and households in Tucumcari receive TV stations from both cities. That makes for an interesting situation in which people can watch the 10:00 p.m. news, at 9:00, on an Amarillo station because of the time zone boundary at the state border and then they can also watch the 10:00 news on an Albuquerque station.
  In the heyday of U.S. Highway 66, Tucumcari was one of the most well known towns along the entire route. For miles and miles, in each direction, large billboards along Route 66 proclaimed
" Tucumcari Tonite! 2,000 Motel Rooms."
  Route 66 was indeed a busy place during its run throug Tucumcari. It was lined with an abundance, actually an overabundance, of motels, gas stations, restaurants and cafes, curio shops and many other types of businesses.
  U.S. Highway 66 through Tucumcari was originally called Gaynell Street, then the name was changed to Tucumcari Boulevard and now it is called Route 66 Boulevard. During its heyday, it was very difficult for pedestrians to cross the street because there was so much traffic zipping by. Tucumcari stretches for about six miles along Old Route 66 and this led to the saying that is not really accurate, that Tucumcari was "two miles long and two blocks wide." The town is much longer than two miles, even back then it was, and it is wider than two blocks, much, much wider. There are some places in the eastern and western parts of Tucumcari that are not much wider than the old highway and the businesses along both sides of it, however.
  Gaynell Street, as Route 66 was originally called, did not go through the downtown business district of Tucumcari, instead it missed the downtown area by about a mile. U.S. Highway 66 went through the southern part of the city. The highway that went through the heart of the downtown business district was U.S. Highway 54. That highway is still in existence but has been re-routed several times and dos not go throuh the downtown area anymore. I will have some things to say about that in future editions of this blog. Some of it past alignments are very interesting to history buffs and highway buffs like me, especially part of the first alignment through downtown.

Prairie Sentinel

  Twenty-four miles west of San Jon, is Tucumcari, the county seat of Quay County. The town's name is 
pronounced (TOO-COME-CARRY).  The town was named for Tucumcari Mountain, which looms south of town. Tucumcari Mountain is really a mesa and it only rises about 700 feet above the surrounding plains. The summit of Tucumcari Mountain is 4,956 feet above sea level while the town of Tucumcari rests at 4,237 feet above sea level. Despite its dimunitive stature, Tucumcari Mountain is a regional landmark as has been for centuries. Indians used it as a landmark on their travels and  many of their trails went past the base of the hill. Later, cowboys and other travelers used Tucumcari Mountain as a landmark as well. Today, the hill silently reposes two miles south of Interstate 40, still beckoning passersby the same way it has for centuries.
Now, there are radio antenna towers adorning its summit, twinkling their iridescent glow under the endless prairie sky.
  The mountain's longtime status as a lookout probably explains the origin of its unique name. It has been said the name means "to lie in wait for something to approach" in an Indian language. But verification of that has proven to be elusive. Tucumcari could be the corruption of an Indian word or it could be just a myth like the current one that has been perpetrated on the traveling public.
  The myth that has been 'sold' to the American public for decades, especially in the halcyon days of U.S. Highway 66, is that there were once two star-crossed teenage lovers, Tokom and Kari, that were from warring tribes and their romance was scorned upon by members of both tribes. As a result, Tokom and Kari killed themselves in a suicide pact while holding hands and died at the base of the mountain that now bears their name. "Tokom" was changed to "Tucum" to make pronounciation easier. Shades of Romeo and Juliet you might say.

Slaughter Alley

  Slaughter Alley is the morbid name that was given to the easternmost stretch of highway 66 in New Mexico. The 40 mile stretch of the highway between Tucumcari and the Texas border (going through San Jon), was probably the most dangerous stretch of the entire 2,448 mile highway. This stretch of the highway was poorly maintained and was known for its potholes and deep ruts that had been worn into the pavement by years of heavy traffic. It was also extremely narrow, barely wide enough for two cars. There was no shoulder to speak of and, in many places, there wasn't even a center stripe! It seems as if the road crews ignored the stretch of highway 66 between Tucumcari and Glenrio because I have read accounts in which travelers who were traveling east on the highway said that the highway was in good to fair condition west of Tucumcari and then, at the Texas border, it was in fantastic condition, but the 40 miles in between were terrible and poorly maintained. There was a saying back in the day that said "only six inches and cigarette paper separate you from death on 66." This saying could certainly apply to other stretches of the fabled highway, but it originally applied to this stretch. This is the stretch of the highway that had the most collisions, many of them head-on collisions.
  It is ironic that the last stretch of Interstate 40 to be built in New Mexico coincides with this same 40 mile stretch between Tucumcari and the Texas border. After the interstate opened, piece by piece, this stretch remained unbuilt, partly because of intense lobbying efforts by residents of
San Jon and Tucumcari not to have their towns bypassed. There were other reasons as well for this delay. There is just something about this stretch of New Mexico that seems to cause highway crews to neglect the roads. Route 66 had been improved in its waning years of existence, but it was still below the standards of other federal, and even state highways, until its decommisioning, in this area, in 1982. The lobbying efforts of the residents of this area resulted in the fact that, for at least a half dozen years, the freeway ended on the western edge of town and all traffic was forced to get onto highway 66 to go through town and continue to stay on highway 66 until the eastern edge of
San Jon, where traffic could get back onto the freeway, a distance of 21 miles. But other stretches of Interstate 40 in this area were also built later than other stretches of the freeway. This was still a narrow, dangerous, two-lane road until the mid 1970s.
  Today, even though Interstate 40 between Tucumcari and the Texas border is well-maintained, it still is in poorer condition than it is on either side of this 40 mile stretch.  Not sure what it is about this area.

San Jon

  San Jon is the next New Mexico town on Old Route 66, now supplanted by Interstate 40. "Jon" is pronounced "hone." No one is really sure where the town's name came from. The Spanish word "zanjon" means "gully." The is a usually dry stream east of town called Rio San Jon, so the town was most likely name after the stream, but how the river got its name is unknown.
  San Jon has about 300 people and it has seen better days. There are several abandoned motels, cafes and gas stations in town, but the town has seen a small resurgence in the past decade. The population had dropped to around 200, but now it hovers at around 300. It once had about 800.
  In fact, the population of San Jon and the enrollment of the school district has risen to the point where
San Jon High School restarted its football team, about ten years ago, after many decades of slumber. They play six-man football for extremely small schools, but the townspeople are happy that they have a football team to root for again. The enrollment of San Jon High School is about 60 students. I remember the first couple of times I was in San Jon when I saw the abandoned football stadium a short distance south of Interstate 40, looking forlorn and decrepit under the relentless prairie sun.
 When Interstate 40 was in the early stages of construction, the residents of San Jon learned that the plans were to build the interstate six miles north of town, completely bypassing San Jon and diverting traffic away from te town. The townspeople fought hard to get the interstate built closer to town and it was finally decided to build Interstate 40 along the northern edge of San Jon, just inside the city limits. Other towns fought against the proposed interstate's bypassing of them, also. In New Mexico, the state legislature passed a short-lived law in 1963 that made it illegal for new freeways to bypass towns, but pressure from the3 federal government and the threat of losing federal highway funds, forced the state to rescind the law. however, in New Mexico, the interstate was built closer to the central business districts of cities and towns than it was in other states because of successful lobbying by state government officials and residents of the affected towns.
  Today, the main drag of San Jon is still called U.S. Highway 66 and there are street signs indicating it as such. Alot of buildings along Route 66, both abandoned and occupied, have murals painted on the exterior walls. Most of them depict scenes from the Old West such as cowboys and trail drives and Prairie Schooners. There is one mural that is a block long. In front of some of these murals, there are weeds poking up through the grass in the crumbling sidewalks. These weeds almost seem to be part of the murals and lend a surreal quality to the them.

Into The Land Of Enchantment

 Glenrio is a town that is in two time zones, since it straddles the Texas/New Mexico border.The two houses in town that are still occupied are in different time zones. This is the only town that I know of that lies in two time zones.
  Four miles southwest of the remains of Glenrio is another ghost town. This one is called Endee. It was named after the ND Ranch. I have not visted Endee, but I plan to on a trip in the very near future. It is on the earlier alignment of Route 66, at the junction with State Highway 93, three miles south of Interstate 40.
  Twelve miles from the Texas border lie the remains of Bard. Actually, there were 2 towns called Bard. It started on the earlier alignment of Route 66 and then moved to the later routing. Today, both Bard and
Old Bard just have a few residents, a half dozen or so. In the newer town of Bard, there seems to be a third alignment of The Mother Road. It is barely discernible, but there was a road there at one time. This alignment is farther north than the other two. I believe it predates what I have been calling the older, or earlier, alignment of Route 66. It was most likely the 1926 alignment of the highway, which is the year the highway was commissioned, or it could be U.S. Highway 66's predecessor, the National Old Trails Highway. If this is the case, this alignment was never paved. Yet, what's left of this early road definitely shows signs that it was graded and maintained at one time.
  Before the present federal highway system got its start in 1926, the nation was a patchwork quilt of dirt roads that usually turned into quagmires after a rain. What roads there were usually connected towns in close proximity to each other and, after leaving populated areas, usually dwindled to a crude set of ruts or many times, disappeared completely, resulting in cross-country travel over desert or grassland for early drivers. The National Old Trails Highway and the Lincoln Highway were the first attempts to create a transcontinental road system.
Five miles west of Bard is San Jon, a town of about 300 people. It had about 800 at one time.

Glenrio, part 2

Glenrio was never a large town. At its peak it only had about 200 people, but it was still a busy place since it catered to travelers on the busiest highway in the country.
  Old U.S. Highway 66 through Glenrio is a forlorn sight. It is still in good condition. It is a wide road with four lanes of traffic separated by a concrete, divider island. The pavement stripes on each side of the divider island are still there, in most places, but they are barely visible. In other places, they have faded into obscurity. It is a wide highway, but it is completely devoid of traffic! Only the occasional vehicle now travels this lonely road and most of those vehicles belong to sightseers who are exploring the old road. The wideness highway is a clear indicator of how busy highway 66 once was.
  About 1/3 of a mile after Old Highway 66 crosses into New Mexico, it becomes a dirt road. It was once paved in this area, but the Quay County Road Department removed the pavement after the highway became obsolete because the claimed it was too expensive to maintain for the minimal amount of traffic it was then carrying. Uh, I wonder how much to remove the pavement on 19 miles of road.? I'll bet it cost quite a bit of money to remove asphalt on 19 miles of road in worker's salaries plus the cost of operating the machinery. If they had just ignored the road and let it fall into disrepair, it would have been much cheaper. Also, why didn'y Quay County remove the pavement all the way to the Texas border instead of stopping about one-third mile short of the border?
 About one mile into New Mexico, the earlier alignment and the later alignment of Route 66 separate. It was 1952 when the highway was re-routed a few miles farther north. The pavement has been removed on both of these alignments.
  Between the former post office and the abandoned First Motel in Texas/Last Motel in Texas, there is a concrete obelisk about five feet tall. This is the state border. There is no engraving on this obelisk, but I am sure there some type of marking on the obelisk at one time, whether it be engraving or mounted signs. The state border goes right through a decapitated windmill. Directly across the old highway from this marker is the dirt road that one of the occupied houses is located on. It is Quay County Road A.

A Two State Town

 As Interstate 40 approaches Glenrio, it just kisses the northwest corner of Deaf Smith County. It is only in
Deaf Smith County for about a mile.
 Glenrio, or rather what's left of it, straddles the border between Texas and New Mexico. I referred to it as a ghost town in the last installment. It is not completely abandoned, there are two occupied houses, but it is a ghost town nevertheless.  It is not what some historians call "a true ghost." In terms of businesses, it is a ghost town in the truest sense of the word because there is not one operating business in town. They all closed for good decades ago.
  The bypassing of Glenrio by Interstate 40 dealt a lethal blow to the town. Of the abandoned buildings that are still standing, there are two former gas stations, one with a garage, two former motels, abandoned tourist cabins (the forerunner of motels) with iron bed frames with broken springs and sagging mattresses still in the rooms, the post office and several houses, among others.
  However, the weeds alongside Old Highway 66 conceal the detritus of other once thriving businesses. Rubble such as broken concrete, scattered adobe bricks, nails and concrete or asphalt driveways serve as mute testimony to the prosperous era of Glenrio when it served travelers on U.S. Highway 66 with every necessary convenience of highway travel.
 One of the motels, located in Texas just a few feet from the state border had the name "First Motel in Texas" on one side of the sign and "Last Motel in Texas" on the other side. This sign is now partially ruined and only some of the letters are visible.
  The Glenrio post office was located in New Mexico, next door to the "First Motel in Texas/Last Motel in Texas."  It appears to be still in good condition and, the one time I was in Glenrio, cluster mail boxes were located in front of it and appeared to be in use. I am guessing that the post offices in either Adrian, Texas or San Jon, New Mexico deliver the mail to these boxes.
  There are two occupied houses in Glenrio, one in Texas, one in New Mexico. The one in Texas is located behind one of the abandoned gas stations, so I am guessing the owner of the gas station once lived in that house. The occupied house in New Mexico is located on a dirt road that straddles the state border and it looks like a ranch headquarters. So the population of Glenrio, I am guessing, is about half a dozen.

A Western Detour

  McLean is the farthest east I have been on the Texas stretch of Route 66. At McLean, I headed north towards the town of Pampa and other locales in the northeastern Panhandle on my vacation last fall. I will discuss these areas in the near future. For now, I would like to talk more about Route 66.
  West of Amarillo, there isn't much left of the old road, which is a stark contrast to the stretch east of the city.
What remains of Route 66 in the western Panhandle is mostly the main streets of the few, struggling towns that still exist. Otherwise, there are a few short fragments here and there. Interstate 40 was built mostly to the south of Route 66 in the western Panhandle and north of Route 66 in the eastern Panhandle.
  There are only 4 towns in Texas along Interstate 40 west of Amarillo. The easternmost one, Bushland, has seen quite a bit of growth in recent years since it has become a bedroom community for Amarillo, which is only seven miles away. Farther west are Wildorado, Vega and Adrian. Bushland's population has recently surpassed 2,000 and, a few years ago, a high school was built to educate teenagers that live in Bushland and also in the many housing developments that have sprung up in the area in recent years. The population of Bushland had hovered at around 300 for decades before the recent surge.
  Of these 4 towns, Bushland is the only one in Potter County (Amarillo is the county seat). The others are in Oldham County and Vega is the county seat of that county.
  On the east edge of Oldham County is Wildorado, which has about 95 people. The population seems to have peaked at around 250, from what I can tell. Eleven miles farther west is Vega, with 884 people. The population of Vega has shrunk, but not by much. At its peak, Vega had 936 people. The Oldham County Courthouse in Vega looks sort of like a museum. 14 miles west of Vega is Adrian, with 166 people. It actually gained population in the last decade, seven people, after decades of decline that saw it shrink from a peak of about 325 people.
 The business loops through all of these towns were once U.S. Highway 66.
  Twenty-three miles west of Adrian lies the most significant stretch of Route 66 in Texas west of Amarillo. It is a short stretch, but very historically significant. It is actually the east end of a long stretch of the old highway that lies mostly in new Mexico, but has its terminus in Texas. This stretch of the old highway begins just east of the ghost town of Glenrio, which was one of the more well known towns along the entire highway back in the day.
  It is sort of ironic that, of the eight states that U.S. Hghway 66 traversed, the biggest one, Texas, had the second shortest stretch of the highway, about 180 miles. The state with the shortest stretch of the Mother Road is Kansas, which claimed only 13 miles of the highway because the highway cut across the far southeast corner of that state.

America's Main Street

U.S. Highway 66 was once the busiest highway in the world and, as a result, was constantly being upgraded or re-routed. So there are many alignments of the highway for road buffs to explore.
  There are a literally scores of dead or dying towns along the fabled highway. On either side of the treacherous Jericho Gap are Groom and McLean, 30 miles apart. Seven miles west of McLean is Alanreed. Alanreed was never very big, about 150 people at its peak. Now it has about 45. Groom currently has about  550 people, but once had over 1,000. It is best known for two things. There is a 190 foot tall white cross that was built fairly recently, after the Route 66 days. It is one of the tallest crosses in the world and it stands in a field just to the south of Interstate 40, which bypasses Groom to the north. Groom is also known for a leaning water tower. It was a functioning municipal water tower at one time, but was de-commissioned by the town government in favor of a newer one. The owner of a local truck stop purchased it to use as a giant advertising sign for his truck stop. He cut two of its legs so they would be shorter than the other two. that is why it leans. He once said he did this "just to make people ask questions." And they certainly did and still do today even though the truck stop has been abandoned for many years. The truck stop was called
"Britten USA' and that is what it still says on the leaning water tower. This water tower is one of the most iconic images ofRoute 66 and appears in nearly every book about Route 66.
  Thirty miles east of Groom and seven miles east of Alanreed is McLean. This town has about 800 people but once had about 1,500. It is one of the more well known towns along the old highway. It was once very overbuilt because it had scores of businesses that catered to cross country travelers. Today, the majority of these businesses are abandoned. There was once a hospital in McLean that was built basically to take care of the carnage that occurred on Route 66 and, especially, the nearby Jericho Gap. The highway was also known known as "Bloody 66" because of all the wrecks, many of them head-on, that occurred on the highway.  McLean sort of looks like a movie set  that was abandoned after the movie was filmed. The abandoned Avalon Theater was once quite famous and was a very busy place in the evenings.
  For about eight miles in the Jericho Gap area between Groom and Alanreed, Interstate 40 straddles the boundary between Donley County to the south and Gray County to the north. The westbound lanes are in Gray County with the eastbound lanes in Donley County.

A Motorist's Nightmare

Highway 66, along with other highways of the day, offered attractions and diversions for the motorist. These attractions did not require speeding off a high speed freeway on a ramp and then negoiating what sometimes is a maddening series of turns and detours. In the days of the two-lane highway, a motorist simply had to pull directly off of the highway to visit one of these attractions.
  Yet, the two-lane highway also had a tendency to offer dangers that are not seen on a passionless slab of four-lane monotony that we call freeways.
 For example, one of these dangers that existed along Highway 66 was the dreaded Jericho Gap about 60 miles east of Amarillo, Texas.
  In this area, there are some low hills and ridges which Route 66, and now Interstate 40, had to negotiate. Between the towns of Groom and Alanreed was the most feared stretch of highway in the United States in the early days of automobile travel. The most infamous stretch was the aforementioned Jericho Gap  the legend  and lore happened in the years from 1926, when U.S. Highway 66  officially became a federal highway, to 1937, when the highway was completely paved and this unpaved stretch of it was re-routed. East and west of this section were paved stretches of road, but this area was unpaved and, thus, a "death trap" for automobiles of the day. You see, the soil in this area is sort of a black, gumbo type soil that sticks to everything  after a rainfall or snowfall. Route 66 went directly through this black, gumbo soil  and it was extremely hazardous  when it was wet. The legend of the Jericho Gap grew and grew until it reached epic proportions. It is still talked about to this day. A traveler's guide that was published by the Civilian Conservation Corps(CCC) in the early 1930s had this to say about the Jericho Gap:
  "The New Age automobiles could move on that highway [66], but were helpless in the gooey, gummy mud of Jericho Gap. Tires spun, mud balled up under the fenders and, if your car fell into the deep ruts, you were there until someone pulled you out...only a team of horses could extract your car from the gumbo..."
  Many farmers who lived along the highway made alot of money by charging motorists to pull their autos out of the thick mud with a team of horses. There is an unproven, but likely, legend that, even during dry times, these farmers would sneak out at night and thoroughly soak the dirt highway so they could make money off of unsuspecting motorists the next day by extracting their vehicles from the sticky mud. This legend has never been proven, but every farmer that lived along the route owned a water wagon and there are accounts that were made by people traveling on Route 66 back in the day that they got stuck in the mud in the Jericho Gap and they had absolutely no idea why the road was so muddy in that particular location when it was not muddy east or west of there.

Why The Craze?

  Why is Route 66 such a craze these days? Alot of it has to do with the fact that people have a yearning, a longing, for the way things used to be. The days before interstate highways and the proliferation of fast food places and strip malls. U.S. Highway 66 is sort of a microcosm of America itself. It is where the motel was first developed, it is  where the first McDonald's opened in Arcadia, California. It is where the fast food business really began its stranglehold on America (not a good thing), and it also represents the days when highways went through the heart of towns instead of along the edge and, as a result, downtown business districts were the heart and soul of every community in America. It also represents a time when highways conformed to the landscape instead of  blasting through it like today's highways blast through hills instead of over or around them.
  In the nebulous beginnings of cross country highway travel, hotels, usually in he heart of cities and towns everywhere, were the norm. These developed into tourist cabins along the highways and then tourist cabins developed into motels.
  The early days of highway travel were not for the faint-hearted. Most of the roads were dirt, which turned into quagmires after rains and the pavement usually extended to the edges of towns or a short distance beyond, before ending. That is when the dangers of highway travel began and those experiences are still written about to this day. Dwight Eisenhower had a bad experience with muddy highways in 1917. During World War II, he was impressed with the Autobahn in Germany and, as a  result, in 1956, while president, he signed the Interstate Highway Act.
  While Route 66 receives most of the attention, there are/were other highways that were replaced, in whole or in part, by interstates. To me, the ones with the most fascinating histories are U.S. Highway 80 and U.S. Highway 91. U.S. Highway 80 once ran from Tybee Island, Georgia to San Diego, California. Now it ends in Dallas, Texas. Everything west of Dallas is now either a business loop for an interstate highway, a state highway, a city street, a county road, a private road or completely missing in some places. Some pieces of old highway 80 are still there, reposing under the merciless sun and serving as a reminder of days gone by. U.S. Highway 80 was once called "The Broadway of America ," in deference to highway 66's appellation as "The Main Street of America." Highway 80 was also one of the busiet highways in America during its heyday and also represented a microcosm of American life, but it never received as much attention as its northern cousin. Highway 80 was actually longer than highway 66. It ran from coast to coast while highway 66 ran from Chicago to Los Angeles.
  The other one that has the most fascinating history, is my opinion, is U.S. Highway 91, which once ran from
Long Beach, California to the Canadian border at Sweetgrass, Montana. Now, U.S. Highway 91 is only 145 miles long, running from Idaho Falls, Idaho to Brigham City, Utah in two different segments separated by a 20 mile "co-alignment" with Interstate 15 south of Pocatello, Idaho. The northern segment, 43 miles long, between Idaho Falls and Pocatello, mostly runs in the shadow of Interstate 15, basically serving as a frontage road for the interstate. The southern segment strikes out on its own and receives quite a bit of traffic.
I have read recently that AASHTO, the organization which oversees federal highways, is seriously considering de-commissioning the remaining segment of U.S. Highway 91, relegating it to the history books, the same fate which has befallen U.S. Highway 66.

A Briefing on Route 66

  U.S. Highway 66 was once the busiest highway in the country. It was basically a victim of its own success. Beginning in the late 1950s, sections of it were bypassed and it was planned to be completely bypassed by the mid 1970s, but people in the affected towns had other ideas. Alot of lawsuits were filed to prevent,the bypassing of certain towns. Some towns were going to be bypassed by interstate highways by several miles and the people in those towns didn't like that idea because the bypass would completely pull traffic away from their towns and businesses would suffer as a result. It was finally agreed to route the new interstates along the edges of the towns, or right through the middle of them in some cases. The most notable example is the 42 mile stretch between Tucumcari, New Mexico and the Texas border. For many years Interstate 40 ended on the east side of Tucumcari and dwindled down to a two lane road and remained a two lane road all the way to the Texas border, where it became a freeway again.  The town of San Jon filed a lawsuit to force the highway planners to re-route the highway closer to town when they learned of plans to build the freeway six miles north of town, thus providing cross country travelers with no reason to patronize San Jon businesses. It was finally agreed to build the interstate on the north edge of San Jon. A good example of a freeway going right through the middle of town is Gallup, New Mexico,. It was originally planned for the freeway to go south of Gallup and miss the town by about two miles.Many towns still suffered, anyway, because the new freeways did not go directly through the downtown business district.  In some cases, a new commercial center sprang up along the interstate, after the downtown area had been bypassed. A good example of this is Winslow, Arizona.
  Other towns filed suit because the original plans called for an exit at each end of town and the town wanted another exit in the middle of town. The best example of this is Williams, Arizona. They won the fight and that middle exit is presently the most utilized exit in the town. Williams was the last town to be bypassed by highway 66 and that came on August 13, 1984, about ten years behind schedule. The next June, in 1985, U.S. Highway 66 was officially decomissioned as a federal highway and ceased to exist.
  Although U.S. Highway 66 is no longer a federal highway, most of the fabled road still exists. Parts of it are still a federal highway. Serving as business loops through various towns. Parts of it are state highways or county roads or city streets. Parts of it are privately owned and still other parts are abandoned and lie next to or near the interstate. In most cases these abandoned stretches are still open to the public in various forms, possibly as a foot trail or it can be driven by someone with a four wheel drive vehicle. Some portions of the highway have completely disappeared, but about 85% of the highway still exists.
 

Route 66

  I will now "move" over to the Texas Panhandle and work northward from there. I had been in the Texas Panhandle about a dozen times, maybe more, I don't know the exact number of times. However, on this trip that I made last fall, I ventured into the eastern part of the Panhandle, which was new and unfamiliar territory to me. My trips in the past usually took me into the western and southern parts of the Panhandle and, occasionally, the northwestern part.
  After spending the night in Amarillo, I headed east out of the city, trying to follow old Route 66 as much as possible. I usually had to drive on Interstate 40, but at most of the exits, I got off the freeway and explored what I could of "The Mother Road."  Most of the legendary highway is still there, in varying states of repair or disrepair. In places, there is even more than one alignment of the famous highway. During the highway's heyday, it was re-routed several times as it was continually improved. The oldest alignments are dirt or gravel. These oldest alignments date from the days before 1937. That is the year that the highway was completely paved from end to end, from Chicago, Illinois to Santa Monica, California. Before 1937, the road was paved in some places, gravel in some places and dirt in still others.
  There are some stretches where the old highway has completely disappeared and other places where it is now on private property and, thus, not accessible to visitors. Most of it is still there, though not all of it is in driveable condition unless a person has a 4-wheel drive vehicle.
  There are even some stretches where the former federal highway now serves as a state highway. Some stretches of it are even still a  federal highway, functioning as a business loop through several towns. It is known as Interstate 40 Business Loop in these short stretches.
 There are even two alignments of Route 66 through Amarillo, the original routing, which followed Third Avenue and then jogged south to Sixth Avenue, went right through the heart of downtown. The later alignment, known as Amarillo Boulevard, was built north of downtown and was much, much wider than the original routing.
 

A Town That Was Named Twice, part 2

 Walla Walla has a great, old, historic downtown area, one of the best downtown business districts I have seen in terms of century-old architecture. It is the county seat of Walla Walla County and the courthouse is Depression-era architecture that is a grayish color. There is a 13-story hotel in the heart of downtown. Most decent sized towns have a high rise hotel in the middle of town, some open for business, some not. They are a reminder of earlier days when downtown areas were the heart and soul of every city and town in America. However, this hotel seems to be overly tall for a town the size of Walla Walla. It is the Marcus Whitman Hotel. It was abandoned for awhile, but it has been re-opened.
  Walla Walla is also located in the grassy, hilly area called the Palouse that occupies much of southeastern Washington. An alternate name for the Palouse Hills is the Horse Heaven Hills because there is so much grass it is heaven for horses.
  Walla Walla is also the focal point of Washington's fledgling wine-industry. There are alot of vineyards in the area.
  Adjacent to Walla Walla on the south is College Place, which has about 8,000 people. Life in
College Place revolves around Walla Walla University. Most towns that are dominated by a university have a medium to large university in town that exerts its influence over life in the town. However, Walla Walla University only has about 1,900 students, and yet it is a commanding presence in the town. The university is affiliated with the Seventh Day Adventist Church. In fact, about 85% of the residents of College Place belong to the Seventh Day Adventist Church. This creates the unusual situation where most of the town's businesses are closed on Saturday, but open on Sunday.
  College Place is home to the Walmart that serves the area.

A Town That Was Named Twice?

  In  southeastern Washington is a town whose name has been ridiculed for years. It is Walla Walla
 One thing that has always stuck out in my mind about Walla Walla is a line from Looney Toons when Elmer
 Fudd was hosting a show where he got to interview Bugs Bunny and the announcer said that the show was hosted by "the Wishy Washy Washing Machine Company of Walla Walla, Washington."
  Walla Walla  has about 32,000 people and lies just six miles from the Oregon border. Adjacent to
Walla Walla on the south is College Place, which has about 8,000 people. The towns were founded three miles apart, but they have grown together. The southern city limits of College Place is only three miles from the Oregon border.
  Since I was in southeastern Washington on this particular trip, I just had to visit Walla Walla, since I had heard the name ridiculed for years, and I am glad I did. I really like the town. The Chamber of Commerce has a slogan that says "a town so nice they named it twice."
  Walla Walla is an agricultural town, with wheat being the predominant crop. Onions are also a staple crop and a special variety of onion is grown in the area. It is the Walla Walla Sweet Onion. Walla Walla also has two colleges, Whitman College and Walla Walla Community College. In addition, neighboring College Place
 is home to Walla Walla University.
  Walla Walla is also home to the Washingon State Penitentiary. The address for the penitentiary has alot of bad luck in it for people who are superstitious. It is 1313 North 13th Street. I am sure that was done deliberately.
  Walla Walla was slated to become the capital of Washington when Washington became a territory, but it never happened. The government was organized in Walla Walla and a Governor's Mansion was built, but Walla Walla was never officially named the capital. That honor went to Olympia instead. Two other serious candidates for the capital were Steilacoom, which is near Tacoma (not far from Olympia) and Ellensburg, in the central part of the state. Walla Walla is only 89 miles from  Lewiston, Idaho, which I blogged about extensively. Lewiston was the capital of Idaho for two years and if it remained the capital and Walla Walla became the capital of Washington, there would have been two state capital cities only 89 miles apart.

The Heart Of The Palouse

  Eight miles west of Moscow, Idaho is Pullman, Washington. Pullman is another small town that is dominated by its university, in this case it is Washington State University. WSU has about 18,500 students. It also occupies a huge, oversized campus like its neightbor, the University of Idaho, does. It is on the northeast side of Pullman, but it seems like the whole east side of town is part of the WSU campus. A rather unflattering  nickname for the university is "WAZZU."
  The Washington State Cougars compete in what was known at the Pac 10 Conference, now known as the Pac 12 because of the addition of two more schools to the conference. Their football stadium, Martin Stadium, is big, but with a capacity of 37,500; it is the smallest stadium in the Pac 12 and one of the smallest in Division 1. Washington State and Idaho are two of the most isolated schools in Division 1.
  The university has a really neat logo that has the letters "WSC, " but the way the letters are drawn, it looks like a cougar with its mouth open. That is a very clever design. The cougar logo is painted on the pavement in the middle of many of Pullman's busiest intersections.
  Pullman is quite a bit hillier than Moscow is. Like Moscow, downtown Pullman contains alot of cafes, bistros, taverns and bars which is typical of college towns. Pullman has a population of about 30,000 people, so it is bigger than Moscow.
  Pullman was founded in 1871, one year earlier than Moscow, but Washington State University was founded one year later than the University of Idaho was--1890 as compared to 1889.
  The eastern part of Washington bears very little resemblance to western Washington  and there has been some talk over the years of splitting the state along the crest of the Cascade Mountains or maybe some point a short distance east of the Cascades. I don't think anything serious has ever come out of it, though.
  East of the Cascades is mostly farming and ranching country and sparsely populated while west of the Cascades is a rainforest,  is heavily populated and prime timber country. Tourism is also more prevalent in the western part of Washington than in the east and it defines the public conception of the state of Washington with its towering trees and dense, wet, moss and lichen covered forests.

Life On The Border

The main commercial strip for Moscow, Idaho is on the west side of town, along Pullman Road. This street, State Highway 8, runs along the north boundary of the University of Idaho campus. Every kind of fast food place you can imagine is in this area and the preponderance of Moscow's motels are in this area. There is a La Quinta Inn on the very western edge of town. In fact, the property line is at the state border and the rooms on the west side of the motel are only about 20 feet from the Washington border. This is where I spent the night on my one and only trip to the area. The motel is actually on West A Street, one block north of Pullman Road, but it is very visible from the highway. The access street to La Quinta Inn dead-ends at the state border and there are two large, concrete barricades just in front of the street's end, a few inches inside Idaho. Just to the north of the end of the street is a tall, metal, yellow pole that is about 8 feet tall. This pole marks the state border. There is no fence marking the border here like there is south of the highway.
  When Pullman Road crosses the state border, there is a building on the north side of the road that straddles the border. It is some type of agricultural association and half of the building is in Washington, half is in Idaho. There are many, many cases lie this all across the country and that must make for some interesting tax bills, not only when buildings straddle state borders, but also county borders and city borders.
  The view of the Palouse Prairie  and the dun-colored, grassy hills was very soothing to me. To me there is something simplistic, yet beautiful and awe-inspiring about grassland, especially an undulating grassland like the Palouse.
  When I was in Moscow, there was a Walmart on Pullman Road. It was  regular Walmart and not a superstore. I have heard that a new Super Walmart was built 8 miles away in Pullman, Washington and the one in Moscow has since closed, but there are rumors it will be renovated into a superstore and reopened, but I don't know if that is true or not. If the rumors are not true, I hope the town finds some type of use for this big, hulking brute so it won't just sit there abandoned right across the street from a university.

University of Idaho

  The University of Idaho sprawls across the west side of Moscow. It is a big campus in terms of acreage. It covers 1,585 acres (about 2 1/2 square miles), and stretches about 1 1/2 miles from north to south and nearly two miles from east to west.  Most of the buildings are on the eastern half of the campus and the western half is mostly undeveloped land, but there is also some farmland and a tree farm on the west side of the campus. The university even has its own golf course! It is on the south edge of campus. The football stadium is unusual looking. It is a dome, called the Kibbie Dome, that does not look like a typical domed stadium. The stadium was originally an outdoor facility and then it was enclosed sometime in the 1970s. It is elongated and sort of looks like a livestock exhibition hall. But they had to make do with an already existing stadium. It looks like something that might be seen at a fairgrounds. The Kibbie Dome holds 17,000 people, which makes it the smallest football stadium in Division I college football. There is talk of building a bigger stadium in order to attract more high profile teams to Moscow, but with the rural character of this area and the fact that there is a Pac 10 school just 8 miles away,  I doubt that there is the population to fill up two big stadiums. And the Pac 10 school nearby, Washington State, has one of the smaller stadiums in Division I football and the smallest in the Pac 10. Martin Stadium only holds 37,500 people. There has also been talk for years of building a stadium on the highway halfway between Moscow and Pullman that both teams could share. If this happens, the Idaho Vandals will play their home football games in Washington!
  The University of Idaho campus was designed by the two sons of reknowned architect Frederick Law Olmsted. Most universities have an architectural theme and, at U of I, it is the Tudor/Gothic style. The two best examples of this are the Administration Building and Memorial Gymnasium. This was the basketball venue until the mid 1970s when the football stadium was enclosed, so now the Kibbie Dome is both a football and basketball venue. However, the volleyball teams still play in Memorial Gymnasium, which has a capacity of 1,500. Memorial Gymnasium has gargoyles on the ledges around the exterior of the building. It also has a tall, gothic-style tower.  It is a real sight to behold.
  The university has about 13,000 students, which makes it the third largest in Idaho, behind Boise State University in Boise and Idaho State University in Pocatello. It is the location of the only law school in Idaho.
  An unusual aspect about the University of Idaho is the fact that the west boundary of the campus is at the Washington border. The campus goes right up to the fence that runs along the state border! The campus tree
farm is right next to the border fence. The University of Idaho is barely in Idaho!
  The university was located in Moscow to appease the people in the northern part of the state who, at the time, were talking about re-joining Washington or forming a new state because they are cut off from southern Idaho by a big expanse of unpopulated wilderness and also because they were still upset that the capital was moved from Lewiston to Boise.

Moscow, Idaho

  There is a town in northern Idaho, on the border with Washington, called Moscow. There is no evidence that the town was named after Russia's capital city, or even named by a Russian. There is still debate among historians about the origin of the town's name.
  Moscow has about 24,000 people. It is the home of the University of Idaho, which has about 13,000 students. The territorial legislature established the University of Idaho a few years after the capital moved from Lewiston to Boise. Since northern Idaho is cutoff from southern Idaho by a vast tract of wilderness and extremely rugged landscape, there was a movement on shortly after the capital left Lewiston, for the northern part of Idaho to either re-join Washington or form a separate territory. That is why the University of Idaho was put in such a remote location. It was primarily to appease the secession-bent people in northern Idaho.
  Even though there are only 28 miles that separate the two towns, Moscow is  2,564 feet above sea level while Lewiston is only 738 feet above sea level. But most of that elevation is gained just outside of Lewiston, as I described in the last installment of this blog. Lewiston and Moscow are both located in the Palouse Region, which covers parts of northern Idaho, eastern Washington and a small portion of northeastern Oregon. It is a lush grassland that is emphatically hilly. The Palouse region is also a lush farming and ranching area.
  Even though Moscow was not named after the city in Russia, its high school sports teams are called the Bears, which is an homage to Russia.  The bear is the national symbol of Russia just like the eagle is the symbol of the United States.
  Moscow is typical of many university towns in the fact that it has a lively nightlife and is also a very educated town. These two things are enhanced by the fact that there is another university town only 8 miles away. That is Pullman, Washington, which is the home of Washington State University.
 There is a very attractive downtown area in Moscow and the heart of it, Main Street, was narrowed in recent years to make the area more pedestrian friendly. The street was narrowed by making the sidewalks wider and by allowing angled parking on one side with parallel parking on the other side . The street is now one lane of traffic each direction. To accommodate any would be traffic problems caused by the narrowing of Main Street, the next street in each direction, Washington Street to the east and Jackson Street  to the west, were transformed in to one-way streets. They are both 3 lanes of one-way traffic with parallel parking on each side. In addition, half a block of Fourth Street, on each side of Main, has been closed off and turned into a pedestrian area basically to allow pedestrians along Main Street unimpeded access without having to worry about cross traffic. Main Street is lined with coffee shops. specialty shops, bistros, nightclubs and bars and is a lively place, both day and night.

The Road North

When  I drove north out of Lewiston, I did not take the main highway, U.S. Highway 95, which is a four lane, divided highway. Instead, I took the original routing of highway 95, which is now known as "Old Spiral Highway." The name says it all. This highway is only eight miles long and it has 64 curves on it! It climbs about 2,100 feet in only eight miles! This was the original routing of highway 95, but now it is a county-maintained road. It is is phenomenal condition, however. In fact, it is actually smoother than a good portion of the current, four lane highway. When the two roads meet eight tortuous miles north of Lewiston, the old highway is actually smoother and in better condition, at least it was in 2006 when I was there. This original alignment of U.S. Highway 95 opened to traffic in 1917.
  The Old Spiral Highway is popular with road enthusiasts. It sees alot of motorcycle traffic and alot of bicycles. The day I drove the Old Spiral Highway, I went uphill, leaving Lewiston. When I inquired about the road in Lewiston, I was told that it is better to go uphill because when people go downhill, there is a tendency to have smoking brakes or even brakes that give out, when they arrive in Lewiston. Old Spiral Highway is a narrow road with very little in the way of shoulders. The so called shoulders are only a few inches wide on each side of the road. Driving the Old Spiral Highway affords spectacular views of the Lewiston/Clarkston/Asotin area.
  The old highway junctions with the new highway less than one mile from the Washington border. After turning left onto highway 95, I almost immediately came upon a rather confusing interchange with U.S. Highway 195. Highway 95's grassy median strip widens here and the off ramp to highway 195 runs through the median. U.S. Highway 195 is only in Idaho for about 100 yards, so IDOT's responsibility for the highway is negligible. After highway 95 turns to the north at this interchange, it is about one mile to a smaller intersection. The highway that veers off to the left here enters Washington after about 1/4 mile. It is a very short federal highway called U.S. Highway 195 Spur. It runs for 0.6, or 6/10, of a mile and junctions with highway 195 in Washington. From there it is another 0.6 mile back to the Idaho border. This is also an original routing of U.S. Highway 95. Previously, highway 95 was only in Washington for 1.2 miles, but when it was built rebuilt as a four lane, divided highway, it was rerouted a short distance to the east, completely bypassing the state of Washington. Previously, U.S. Highway 95 angled to the southwest and entered Washington. Then, a short distance into Washington, it curved to the east and re-entered Idaho along the path that is now U.S. Highway 195. I drove this little loop that is in two states.
  From the junction of highways 95 and 195, it is only 20 miles to Moscow. No, not the city in Russia, but the town in Idaho. In my next few installments of this blog, I will talk about Moscow, Idaho. It is another town that I really like.

Asotin, Washington

 Asotin, population 1,100, is the county seat of Asotin County, Washington. It lies across the Snake River from Hells Gate State Park in Idaho, which is south of Lewiston.
  The Asotin County Courthouse is rather unusual. Looking at it from the front, it appears as two old red brick buildings that are about 100 years old. Just a few inches of space separate the walls of the buildings, which is typical of many downtown buildings all across the country.  The buildings are both two stories and look like they might have been stores at one time. However, driving around the side of the courthouse, the red bricks give way to fake adobe stucco about halfway back. Then, looking at the courthouse from the back side, it appears to be one building, with no demarcation between them. Evidently the county government bought two abandoned stores and combined them into one to serve as a courthouse.
Just one block away is the Asotin County Courthouse Annex. It occupies a large, landscaped plaza and dominates the town of Asotin. It is just an auxiliary county office building and not the main courthouse but it is unusual because it is quite a bit larger than the courthouse is, it occupies a plaza like courthouses do and it dominates the town like many courthouses do, yet it is not the main courthouse.
  Asotin is located in the Palouse Region, a lush and grassy, but emphatically hilly area in eastern Washington that also covers parts of northern  Idaho and northeastern Oregon.  Asotin is located in the same "hole" that Lewiston and Clarkston are in and, at the south edge of town, State Highway 129 switchbacks precipitiously up the face of a mesa. The drive down this mesa affords spectacular views of the whole area!

Twin Cities On The Border

Lewiston has about 32,000 people and is the second largest town in northern Idaho, after Coeur d'Alene. Directly across the river from Lewiston is Clarkston, Washington, which has about 7,200 people. Both towns are named after famed explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who passed through this area in 1804. Five miles south of Clarkston is Asotin (pronounced A-SOW-TIN). Asotin has about 1,100 people and it is the county seat of Asotin County. In fact, the are only three towns in Asotin County, the other one is Anatone, a town of about 30 people sixteen miles south of Asotin. There is also an unincorporated area just outside the city limits of Clarkston that has about 10,000 people, which is more population than Clarkston has.  Asotin County occupies the southeast corner of Washington. The county borders Idaho on the east and Oregon on the south.
  Lewiston, meanwhile, is the county seat of Nez Perce County, while, in a strange twist, Nezperce(spelled as one word) is the county seat of Lewis County. These two counties need to trade names, it will make more sense for Lewiston to be in Lewis County and Nezperce to be in Nez Perce County.
  Lewiston has a very old and historic downtown business district, which is just southeast of the confluence of the two rivers. Although I have not found any evidence of it in my research, there must have been another town just south of Lewiston that was later annexed into the city of Lewiston. This area I am wondering about is called Lewiston Orchards or, simply, The Orchards. The street numbering system in Lewiston is repeated in The Orchards area. For example, they both have First Street, Second Street, Third Street, etc. The ones in The Orchards usually have a "South" appendage added onto them because they are on the south side of the city. One of Lewiston's major streets, 17th Street, suddenly becomes 5th Street South at the intersection with Preston Avenue. There are several other numbered streets that suddenyl change numbers at an intersection. for this reason, I am convinced The Orchards used to be a separate town that has since been absorbed by Lewiston.
  The location of the old Territorial Capitol Building in Lewiston, near the Clearwater River, is now occupied by the county historical museum. From pictures I have seen, the capitol was a simple, wooden building that was probably intended to be a temporary structure. When Lewiston was the capitol of Idaho, the capitol building was only half a mile from the Washington border.