Tucumcari’s Old Route 66

We had been trying to get out on a short trip since April but, well, life got in the way. Finally, in mid-June, we went for a weekend to eastern New Mexico, with Tucumcari as the primary photography target. We had planned for a 3 day/2 night trip to Tucumcari and Conchas Lake, but an unexpected blast-furnace of a heat wave forced us to truncate our plans. Despite the shortened trip, we came back with some good photos.

Tucumcari (pronounced TOO-come-carry) is a town on the historic Route 66, which was the main artery between Chicago and Los Angeles from the 1920s until the 1960s. Route 66 has often been called the Mother Road because of its historical importance. 

Over the decades, Route 66 took different paths through the southwestern US as new roads were paved and political and economic forces sometimes determined its layout. Through it all, Tucumcari largely remained a constant stopover point for travelers during the heydays of Route 66. Ultimately, Eisenhower’s Interstate system of highways relegated Route 66 — and many of the local businesses that relied on the travelers that plied the roadway for their survival — to the dustbin of history. That said, there are still businesses that continue to exist along the old Route 66. We love to visit and patronize these places because they stir memories from Todd’s childhood, and also because it would be a shame to let the people that operate them and historical significance be forgotten.

Today, the old Route 66 has been largely paved over by Interstate 40, but one can still travel the the old Mother Road by taking what are now called frontage roads. Often they are demarcated with brown “Historic Route 66” signs.

Driving into town, we came first to the New Mexico Route 66 Museum. It offered exhibits and photos of the famous route through the Land of Enchantment. Below is a gallery of some of the fun photos we took there. A bonus was that the staff allowed Koda inside, where she enjoyed the very cold air conditioning — a respite from the 90+ degrees outside.

We drove around town for a bit to get oriented and found some colorful landmarks to photograph. 

There is a certain architectural style to the businesses along Route 66, much of which falls into the “Googie” type of architecture (not to be confused with the “Google” of the present day). The name Googie comes from the 1949 John Lautner design of Googie’s Coffee Shop in Hollywood, CA. The Googie style took cues from the growing car culture of the era and rising Space Age themes of the 1950’s and 60’s. Googie often incorporates non-traditional and trapezoidal rooflines as a hallmark of the design. There are also Art Deco influences visible in Googie architecture.

Another common theme is neon signage, which at the time, was considered “high tech,” even if that term didn’t exist during that era. Today, in the age of computer-controlled LED lighting, neon still carries a distinctive look and atmosphere that LEDs cannot adequately imitate.

We did encounter one vintage motel that had replaced its neon sign tubes with LED technology. The look just didn’t “work,” in our opinion. In fact, it looked rather cheap and garish. It was so non-photogenic that we didn’t bother taking any photos of it. It’s too bad, because the style of their sign could have been a great photographic capture had it been refurbished in the original neon tubes and incandescent bulbs. Yes, we know that neon is really expensive to do nowadays, and that incandescents are tough to find any more.

In addition to the neon signage, the style of the buildings of the Route 66 area in Tucumcari are distinctive and definitely of the Googie style. The overall shapes and lines are usually simple and straight, and then suddenly your eye encounters an unexpected radical curve or acute angle. In some buildings the window glass is set in the walls at unexpected angles. The front windows of the lobby of the Blue Swallow Motel (pictured above) are an example of this style, as are the windows in the long-defunct Ranch House Cafe, where simple square windows are rotated 45 degrees.

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We stopped for lunch at Watson’s Bar-B-Que, a unique place that is part of the old fashioned general Tucumcari Ranch Supply store. Our brisket sandwiches were excellent and the staff was terrific. We highly recommend this neat family-owned place if you are in town.

One of the most documented attractions of the Mother Road is Tucumcari’s own Tee Pee Curios (no, we didn’t misspell that; the building uses both spellings at once!). We weren’t there when it was open, but it’s the outside of the shop that gets all the attention anyway. 

But the real gem of Tucumcari is the Blue Swallow Motel. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it is the perfect symbol of Tucumcari: still alive, still authentic, still beautiful. Photographing this iconic motel has long been a bucket list item for us. We had hoped for a better sunset sky for this twilight shoot, but it wasn’t to be that night. The great thing is that Tucumcari is only three hours away. We can always go back another time to catch better light and to see what else Tucumcari reveals to us.

Since RoadRunners is the name of our blog, we couldn’t help but notice all the Road Runner signs and references everywhere we looked in town. We were able to capture a few of them.

We stayed at the Blaze-in-Saddle RV Park, a nice little park on the edge of town with very clean bathrooms and a small dog run. We had a good breakfast the next morning at Kix on 66, before heading for home. Good thing: we heard it was 99 degrees in Tucumcari the day we left.