On our way to a family reunion in Texas I was told by a local in Santa Rosa, New Mexico about an old alignment that wasn't on my map. We went a little way our of town and turned on a gravel road that got smaller and smaller until it was a single track winding across the prairie. Both boys were asleep and our van was a 4X4 so I wasn't worried. We went along two railroad bridges before the road began to widen. We came to a fork in the road where there had been a few businesses. One had been a gas station another a shop and junk yard. There was the front of a '48 Packard poking out of the tall brush. I climbed on top of the van to see over the growth and could see dozens of old cars from the late '30s to the early '60s. There was a ranch house near but no one home. We took the fork that headed back toward I-40 and a few miles later came out in what's left of Glen Rio on the Texas/New Mexico state line. Several years later when my son and I were on his last return trip from Lubbock I took him that way to show him what he had missed. Almost all the cars were gone, probably gathered by whoever has gleaned all the area and stacked them in Moriarty beside I-40.
Just as my fresh College grad son was expressing his doubt that there was any truth in my story and was telling me that there was no way desirable vintage cars could be found so close to I-40 or Route 66 we came on a complete '55, an engineless '57, and a '41' coupe all Chevies sitting in the brush behind an old gas station. There was no one any where around. That was in December 2005. I bet they are all gone now it's big business.
