Backroads & Byways of New Mexico by Sharon Niederman

Author:Sharon Niederman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Countryman Press
Published: 2020-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

FIND LOTS OF BIG SKY AND OPEN SPACE ALONG OLD US 60

8

US HIGHWAY 60

SAILING THE OCEAN-TO-OCEAN HIGHWAY TO THE PIEWAY

ESTIMATED LENGTH: 140 miles

ESTIMATED TIME: Two hours driving, half-day to explore

GETTING THERE: Drive through Socorro to south end of town. (Socorro is 82 miles south of Albuquerque on I-25.) Go right (west) on US 60.

HIGHLIGHTS: Very Large Array, Pie Town

The first transcontinental highway, from Virginia Beach, Virginia, to Los Angeles, California, was begun in 1912 and not completely paved until 1947. This road began well before Route 66; it followed an old wagon road from Springerville, Arizona, to Socorro. Today’s US 60 basically follows the same configuration. Unlike Route 66, it was never realigned. It remains the slow road two-lane through New Mexico going east to west, with a 65-mph speed limit, no billboards, no chain restaurants, and no chain motels. This is a journey through several of New Mexico’s parallel universes: the Old West, the high-tech scientific world, the world of the arts, and the world that was opened up by the railroad. If instead of heading west, you turned east, taking off from I-25, you would pass through many miles of “big empty,” ancient Spanish mission ruins (see Chapter 9), the salt lakes east of Willard, and farming communities devastated by the drought after drought brought by 20th century climate change. Continuing on to Clovis and the eastern border with Texas are little towns and iconic Santa Fe Railway mission-designed stations. The stations were spaced 17 miles apart, for that was how long steam engines could travel before needing to take on more water.

But much of the trip west feels like a trip on a roadway to the sky, without landmarks or bearings along the roadside. There’s so little traffic the driver feels like they own the road, traveling at a speed that allows for taking in both the vastness and the emptiness. Along the way, pass through the villages of Magdalena, Datil, the Very Large Array, Pie Town, and Quemado. Travel through the Plains of San Agustin, a stretch of desert about 50 miles west of Socorro that spans Socorro and Catron Counties and extends south of US 60. Coinciding with the 1947 Roswell Incident that inspires UFO curiosity (see Chapter 7) was a report of another incident out here, according to Grady L. “Barney” Barnett, involving the reported crash of an intact craft and the recovery of several alien bodies on the Plains of San Agustin. He supposedly passed a lie detector test, but otherwise, little is actually known about this “other Roswell incident.” For the past decade, the area has been generating controversy because of plans afoot to drill the aquifer and pipe water to metropolitan areas like Rio Rancho. The floor of the valley held a lake during the Pleistocene, from about 2.8 million years ago to the last Ice Age, 11,700 years ago. It is possible to travel on US 60 all the way through New Mexico from the Texas to the Arizona borders.

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