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.