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Route 66 Scenic Byway
The legendary Route 66 Scenic Byway enters New Mexico across a vast, sunlit prairie before meandering through rocky outcrops, quiet streams and adobe villages.
Along the way, the high desert landscape is both austere and sublime, its red-hued cliffs dropping off into immense llanos or pine-wooded hills and valleys. Motels and 1950s diners with restored neon signs line portions of Route 66, others wind through the wooded foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains among Hispanic villages, where the communities center their spiritual and physical heart around adobe churches that predate Route 66 by roughly a century. Travelers who opt for the “Mother Road” of Route 66 in New Mexico are advised to arm themselves with maps and road guides before setting out, the many twists, turns and dead ends of Route 66 among modern highways can leave even the most well-oriented travelers slightly dazzled.
Approximately 265 miles of the original Route 66 alignment are still drivable in New Mexico, according to the New Mexico Tourism Department. This includes stretches along major highways like I-40, as well as some of the original road in the form of frontage roads or business loops around towns like Santa Rosa and Tucumcari.
Here's a more detailed breakdown:
- .Much of the Route 66 alignment in New Mexico now serves as frontage roads for Interstate 40 or business loops around towns.
- .In some areas, like near San Jon, the original gravel alignment of Route 66 still exists, continuing to the Texas state line.
- .The drivable Route 66 in New Mexico passes through or near several of the original boom towns that thrived due to the route's traffic, including Tucumcari, Santa Rosa, Albuquerque, Grants, and Gallup.
- .Some ghost towns along I-40, which were once part of Route 66, still stand.
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