You don’t have to look hard to see reminders of the highway’s glory days when gas stations, food drive-ins, offbeat businesses and “tourist courts” lined the byway.
You’re about to enter the quirky side of Albuquerque.įor modern kicks with a distinct flavor of the past, cruise Central Avenue west from the State Fairgrounds to Nine Mile Hill at the western city limits. In the next block, a 10-foot flying saucer hovers over the Satellite Café. Some of the original motels still exist between Eubank and Carlisle streets, but the action really starts when you reach Nob Hill and the Aztec Motel (1931), its bizarre façade decorated with thousands of ornaments by a modern resident. Once through Tijeras Pass heading west, weary travelers of past decades entered a multicolored corridor of neon signs. Yet, the “Mother Road” refuses to die, especially in Albuquerque. Today, the famous road is listed as one of America’s most endangered historic landmarks. After reaching its heyday in the 1950s, the byway’s last segment was decommissioned in 1984. Beginning as a network of corrugated dirt roads in 1926, Route 66 soon morphed into America’s Main Street connecting Chicago with Los Angeles.
