Glenrio has been a ghost town since the late 1980s. The town, which straddles New Mexico and Texas along Route 66, once operated under two state jurisdictions. The Texas side was in a dry county, so the bar was on the New Mexico side. The gas station was on the Texas side because the taxes were a little cheaper. Glenrio was a stopover for tourists and travelers along Route 66 after migration from the Dust Bowl crisis subsided in the late 1930s. Highway dwellers continued the town’s development by pumping gas, grabbing a snack, and taking breaks to stretch their legs.

Then, in the late 1950s, construction began on Interstate 40, and by 1975, a new highway completely bypassed the town of Glenrio, effectively turning it into a ghost town. Today, it’s a tourist attraction along Route 66 for potential nostalgic adventure seekers along its nickname “Mother Road” or “America’s Main Street”, which dates back to the Great Depression. Their photographs and videos show buildings where plaster and cement slowly decay, revealing adobe infrastructure and remaining artifacts.

All in all, not much remains of Glenrio, nor much of the other abandoned and dilapidated towns and cities along Route 66. Instead, I found them on the “Best Ghost Towns Along Route 66” list.hugging kerouac on the road or Steinbeck’s grapes of wrath— Stop along the way for a glimpse of the quaint rustic where time stands still.

Of course, there are more vibrant towns and stops along Route 66. You might recognize Route 66’s classic Blue Swallow Motel in Tucumcari, New Mexico, about 60 miles from Glenrio. Alternatively, some might venture into Albuquerque, Amarillo, Oklahoma City, or the bustling, populated cities nearby.

Route 66 signs, roadside stops and souvenir shops are dedicated to the distant past, remembered through bumper stickers at each stop along the way. But what is lost in tapping into nostalgia? We tend to pick anecdotes, stories, and memories that make for a more harmonious depiction of the then and present world we drive in.John Steinbeck’s famous line grapes of wrath cut in half. Many of his t-shirts, bumper stickers, keychains, and billboards feature half of his line, “66 is Mother Road.” In simple terms, freedom and possibility are encapsulated in a truly American cross-country road trip. It’s the same ideology that inspired Kerouac’s thinking. on the road, And movies like, Thelma and Louise, Bagdad Cafe, Cars, Easy Rider, others. What do you have there? The Route 66 road trip begs the question, but it hides how we came to own “the thing out there.”

“Manifest Destiny” and “The Great Expansion” might come to mind. Alternatively, he may be the Homestead Act of 1862 who allocated the subsidy. Mainly western “federal land” states For Americans, it’s about forcing Native American tribes off the land.For decades, these inexperienced farmers overcultivated the land, eradicating the native plants and water buffalo grass that protected it, effectively Caused the Dust Bowl Crisis of the 1930s. This has prompted millions of people to load their wagons and travel west to California on Route 66 and the trails that were once used as migration routes.So it makes sense Steinbeck’s full line reads, “Route 66 is the mother road, the way to fly,” but given the current worsening climate crisis, the line and its history must be considered as a whole.

“We are experiencing seven years of drought. [in Oklahoma]’” Jody Risley tells me. “It’s drier now than it was in the Dust Bowl,” said Risley, director of the Cimarron Heritage Center in Boise, Oklahoma. The area was one of the hardest hit by the Dust Bowl Crisis, and the Center serves as a condensed version of that history. They have a real schoolhouse turned home from the original Dust Bowl, and a tractor that destroyed the plains and caused a crisis. It’s no surprise that Risley’s breadth of knowledge is so vast. She comes from a long line of Oklahomans, which means she was raised by those who didn’t leave their hometown during the Dust Bowl Crisis, and is tracking the very significant changes they’ve gone through since then. “I have land on the edge of Colorado,” Risley continues. “My grandfather settled there in 1915. At the time, he was drilling an 80-foot-tall well, and about six years ago it dried up. When digging, you had to go all the way to the bottom of the canyon, about 380 feet deep before reaching the surface. .”

But the climate is changing. Droughts are getting worse, water is scarce and the disasters we face today are changing our landscapes, our chances of survival, our habits and customs. of Institute of Economics and Peace predicts that there will be 1.2 billion climate change refugees by 2050. Combining this with the projected population, 9.8 billion By 2050, with no clear path to a renewable and equitable future, many more resources will be eradicated. Risley expressed her disappointment at the younger generation of farmers she knows who, since Dustbowl, are degrading and altering irrigation systems that have been put in place to protect other irrigation systems. “They say, ‘If we run out of water here, we can go somewhere else,'” Risley laments. “But where are they going?”

The Risley-run Heritage Center talks about the climate change inherent in Route 66’s history, but much of that truth is lost in the route’s memorialization and current fanfare. The same displaced Native Americans are stereotyped and used as tourist attractions. As you drive along Route 66, you can pass several sun-burnt billboards advertising “traditional Indian trading posts,” ignoring tribal nuances and cultural diversity. increase. You can also see the “World’s Largest Teepee” in what is now called Arizona. The native Navajo people of the land traditionally live in Hogan. These colonizer-tourist traps provide a monolithic view of Native Americans and work to create a similarly barren understanding of Route 66.

We continue to tap into our narrow nostalgia as we push forward toward a future that will inevitably overlap with the past in the harm we do and are doing to this land. Where are they going, as Risley guessed?where do you do we do you want to go

The fertile land that attracted immigrants to California in the 1930s is facing drought, wildfires and record flooding. We are facing, and will continue to face, detrimental changes in the local climate that will transform agriculture, our health and our daily lives. More parts of America are destined to become ghost towns.

Tesh Jennings SakpalA Torrance rancher in Tucumcari, New Mexico, saw the towns around him disappear. “There used to be a small town called Rezbia nearby, but it is gone now. People are leaving the farming community due to lack of opportunities,” Sakpal said. “Agriculture is dying. Nothing grows because there is no water.” didn’t seem to help. To grow food and protect the land, he works in regenerative agriculture.

By investing in environmental causes, we hope his home doesn’t just become an abandoned property on Route 66.