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.