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.