Glenrio Texas - A Route 66 Casualty

TEXAS LEGENDS

Glenrio - One More Route 66 Casualty

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First Inn Last Inn, May, 2004. David Alexander.

This image available for photographic prints HERE!

Straddling the border between Texas and New Mexico is the forgotten ghost town of Glenrio. Once a monument along the boom and bust highway of Route 66, it now remains home to only the critters and the blowing tumble weeds of the vast prairie.

In 1901 the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad came through the area and two years later Glenrio was born. The name Glenrio, which stems from the English word “valley” and the Spanish word for river, is neither in a valley nor along a river.

In 1905 the region was opened to small farmers, who settled on choice 150-acre plots and a year later the Chicago, Rock Island and Gulf Railway established a station at Glenrio. The settlement began to bustle with cattle and freight shipments. Initially the area was primarily populated by large cattle ranches but as time passed much of the surrounding land was planted in wheat and sorghum and the farming expansion was responsible for most of the growth of the area population.

A post office was established on the New Mexico side of the community, but the mail arrived at the railroad depot located on the Texas side. Sitting in its precarious location crossing Texas and New Mexico, Glenrio became the subject of a long battle between both states for tax rights.

New Mexico Post Office, May, 2004, David Alexander.

By 1920 Glenrio had a hotel, a hardware store, and a land office, as well as several grocery stores, service stations, and cafes. A newspaper, the Glenrio Tribune, was published from 1910 to 1934. There were no bars on the Texas side of the community, since Deaf Smith County was dry, and no service stations on the New Mexico side because of that state's higher gasoline tax.

Glenrio, New Mexico Old Gas Station

Old Gas Station, May, 2004, Kathy Weiser.

During the prosperity of the 1920s politicians and entrepreneurs decided that America needed a national highway system, and a decade later Route 66 was born. In 1938, just months after the final pavement through Llano Estacado (the Staked Plains) terrain of Route 66 was finished, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath was filmed in Glenrio for three weeks.

At the midpoint between Amarillo, Texas and Tucumcari, New Mexico, and 10 miles from the Chicago-LA midpoint of Route 66, Glenrio became a popular stopping place for Route 66 travelers and a “welcome station” station was built near the state line.

Somewhere along the line a new post office was built on the Texas side of Glenrio.

In the 1940s, the highway quickly became a supply line for a nation at war. In the post-war boom of the 1950s Route 66 became “America’s Main Street” as families piled into their chrome-laden two-tone Impalas, traveling to exotic vacation spots like the Grand Canyon and Disneyland.

Continued Next Page

Glenrio Texas Post Office

Post Office on the Texas side of Glenrio, May, 2004,

Kathy Weiser.

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