Located on the Santa Fe Trail and the old pre-1937 alignment of Route 66 in New Mexico, Tecolote (Tek-oh-low-tay) is an unincorporated community located next to Tecolote Creek on the west side of I-25 at Exit 335.

Salvador Montoya and five other individuals petitioned for the Town of Tecolote Grant in 1824. Mexican Governor Bartolome Baca approved the 48,123-acre grant, stating that agricultural decline in the province was “not due to a lack of lands, but of laboring hands.” Salvador Montoya was the first to establish a small farm to become a supply center on the Santa Fe Trail.

The town’s historic Church, Nuestra Señora de Dolores (Our Lady of Sorrows), is thought to have been built in about 1838. It remains in active use today.

In August 1846, during the Mexican-American War, General Stephen Kearny arrived at Tecolote and, in the plaza, announced that the citizens were no longer under Mexican sovereignty.

After the Mexican-American War, the U.S. Army at Fort Union, New Mexico, established Camp Tecolote in about 1850, south of the town near Tecolote Creek, to use in their campaigns against the Indians. It was used periodically until 1870.

A post office opened in the settlement in 1851.

In 1855, Major William Anderson Thornton, a member of a military expedition from St. Louis, Missouri, to New Mexico, noted in his diary on August 24:

“Marched at 8 a.m. with General [John] Garland and passed Las Vegas at 1 p.m. and encamped at 5 p.m. – Tecolote… Country exceedingly pretty as we have entered mountain scenery and commenced crossing a spur of the Rocky Mountains…The villages of Vegas and Tecolote were made of unburnt clay and, in appearance, resemble unburnt brick kilns in the States. People poor and dirty. Flocks of sheep, goats, and cattle were very numerous. Wheat and corn raised by irrigation… The scenery, as we advanced toward Tecolote, became grander and more beautiful. Our camp is located on a beautiful spot overlooking the mud village…”

For years, a steady flow of travelers and merchandise moved along the Santa Fe Trail, but when the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad was built through the area around 1880, the tracks were routed south, bypassing the town and, no doubt, hurting its economy.

In 1886, the Land Department proposed issuing a patent to the Town of Tecolote for the Mexican government’s land grant in 1824. Upon hearing this, Salvador Montoya’s heirs protested because the patent should be issued in the name of the original grantees since the Town of Tecolote was not a corporate entity. However, the original grant to the town was confirmed, and control was issued to a Board of Trustees.

Tecolote’s post office closed in 1923, when mail was delivered from Las Vegas. Three years later, Route 66 came through the town, but it was rerouted in 1937. Today, several concrete bridge supports reveal where old Route 66 once crossed Tecolote Creek on the South end of town. A new bridge now crosses the creek along the frontage road.

The Daughters of the American Revolution placed a granite Santa Fe Trail marker here, but it’s a little hard to find. It is located at the road’s edge between the village entrance and the abandoned Tecolote Creek Bridge.

Tecolote’s population is about 298 people today.

Route 66 and the Santa Fe Trail continue along I-25 to the Southwest for six miles before reaching another small village — Bernal, New Mexico.

 

©Kathy Alexander/Legends of America, updated September 2026.

Also See:

New Mexico Route 66

Route 66 Main Page

Santa Fe Trail – Highway to the Southwest

Santa Fe Trail in New Mexico

Sources:

Hinkley, Jim; Route 66 Encyclopedia, Voyageur Press, 2016
Town of Tecolote Land Grant
Works Progress Administration, New Mexico: A Guide To The Colorful State, 1940