New Mexico communities prepare for Route 66 centennial celebrations all year long – Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
New Mexico communities big and small have worked for a year or longer to unveil their celebrations next year for the 100-year anniversary of Route 66.
Along the 487-mile historic corridor crossing New Mexico from east to west, they’re restoring gas stations, painting murals, installing public art and fixing up neon signs. They’re planning community-wide parties featuring vintage cars, air shows and historical presentations about how the “Mother Road” shaped life in their communities.
A Route 66 Sign on Central Avenue in Albuquerque at night. (Rainer Grosskopf/Getty Images) That’s according to a list of roughly $4 million in grants the state Tourism Department has offered over the last two years to promote the centennial. Grants for infrastructure, marketing and special events range from $4,000, like for the Pinto Bean Route 66 Centennial Fiesta in Moriarty, to $250,000 for art installations in Albuquerque.
New Mexico State Historian Rob Martinez told Source New Mexico the celebrations are fitting to celebrate a road that connected the country and had profound impacts on tiny towns alongside it. Like the Camino Real and Santa Fe Trail, Route 66 created a “crossroads” of people and culture, he said.
“These trails and roads are very important in not just promoting New Mexico, but establishing our culture and changing it, bringing new peoples and new technologies and new ideas on the asphalt,” he said.
The El Rancho Hotel in Gallup along Route 66. Gallup and other communities across the state have been preparing for the 2026 Route 66 centennial for more than a year. (Patrick Lohmann/SourceNM) Beginning in 1926, with the help of congressional legislation creating a public highway system, the United States began building Route 66, seeking to connect growing cities and rural communities across the country with the help of the automobile.
Doing so in the state of New Mexico proved challenging due to its topography, according to the state Tourism Department. The first iteration of Route 66 entered New Mexico via Texas and shot northward to Santa Fe through Santa Rosa and Tucumcari, before dropping to Albuquerque through Los Lunas, heading back toward Laguna Pueblo and entering into Arizona just past Gallup.
Depression-era public works spending allowed the route to be straightened — eliminating the Los Lunas section — and paved. It was the first paved road in history. From there, it became the most famous American road in history, Martinez said.
Route 66 Neon Drive-Thru sign along the historic Route 66 in Grants, New Mexico, during dusk. (Jacob H/Getty Images) New Mexico’s slice of Route 66 has appeared in multiple works of art since then, according to Martinez. He remembers an episode of “I Love Lucy” featuring a road trip on Route 66 through Albuquerque. Nat King Cole sings about “Gallup, New Mexico” in the classic 1946 “Get Your Kicks,” and the 1940 film adaptation of John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” starring Henry Fonda features the state prominently.
“Tulsa, Oklahoma is considered the capital of Route 66, although I would say it should be Gallup or Albuquerque,” Martinez said. “Though, I’m biased.”
Other projects the Tourism Department funded are beautification of highway overpasses in Guadalupe County, an improved gateway in Albuquerque’s Old Town and upgrades to the State Fair Tower and RV village at the New Mexico State Fair grounds.
Santa Rosa received $60,000 for a “musical road” along a half-mile stretch of Route 66 east of the village, paying local company San Bar Construction to install custom rumble strips on the shoulder of the road. At the right speed, drivers who steer their tires onto the rumble strips will hear “Get Your Kicks” playing.
Iconic TePee Curios souvenir shop on Route 66 with a vintage neon sign and mural. Located in Tucumcari, New Mexico. (Teresa Otto/Getty Images) Lisa Brassell, part of the town’s Route 66 committee, told Source that not all of the funding has come together yet. First, the village will need to secure the rights for the song, and the New Mexico Transportation Department will have to re-pave the road to remove any potholes that might cause a false note, she said.
“Otherwise, nobody can tell what the song is,” she said, laughing.
But even without the musical rumble strips, she said Santa Rosa has festivities planned throughout the year, including the regular use of one local man and his 1926 vintage car. “He’s become kind of a mascot,” she said.
She said Santa Rosa is just one of dozens of New Mexico communities putting their own local flavor on the celebration.
“It depends on each individual community, on how they capture that essence, that contribution that the Mother Road has made for our communities, especially in rural New Mexico,” she said. “We’re working hard in our communities to celebrate the birthday.”
Advocacy group wants endangered species listing for plant named after New Mexico botanist – Cathy Cook, Albuquerque Journal
An environmental advocacy group is petitioning for federal protections of a rare New Mexico flower that grows in an oil-rich region.
The nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity filed a petition with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list Allred’s flax under the Endangered Species Act in December. The orange-flowered perennial lives in gypsum soil and was discovered by botanists with the Bureau of Land Management and the New Mexico State Forestry Division in 2011. It was named after retired New Mexico State University botanist Kelly Allred, according to reporting by The Associated Press.
“It's a surprisingly beautiful little flower in an area that I think a lot of other people think of as barren,” said Brian Nowicki, the Center for Biological Diversity’s Southwest Program deputy director. “And it's one of those things that causes you to stop and pay closer attention to the small scale that life is happening sometimes on those really big landscapes that we have in New Mexico.”
Allred’s flax has chubby, waxy leaves that are able to keep in moisture and a branching, woody base.
The plant lives in the Yeso Hills of Eddy County. Herbicides have impacted part of the Yeso Hills and could become a threat to the species, according to the New Mexico Rare Plants website, which is maintained by the New Mexico Natural Heritage Program, the University of New Mexico Library and the state’s Energy, Minerals, and Natural Resources Department-Forestry Division's Endangered Plant Program. Road and pipeline projects have also impacted the plant in a few locations and could continue to affect it as oil and gas development in the area expands, the rare plants guide says.
The Center for Biological Diversity is petitioning to list Allred's flax as an endangered species.
Courtesy of Mike Howard
The Center for Biological Diversity identifies oil and gas development as a threat to the plant’s habitat.
“The very places where a lot of the oil wells are currently exploding in number, right on top of that is where these plants have the soil that they are able to live in,” Nowicki said.
New Mexico Oil and Gas Association President Missi Currier said in a statement that association members protect native species like Allred’s flax and are “committed to science-based solutions and collaborative approaches that balance conservation with the energy needs that power our nation and beyond.”
The state of New Mexico listed Allred’s flax as an endangered species in 2020, which protects it from being collected, removed, transported, exported or sold without a valid permit for specific scientific purposes. It’s unclear if or when the federal government could grant protections.
“Usually, it's going to be months before they have a chance to process (the petition) and give a response,” Nowicki said.
For Nowicki, Allred’s flax isn’t the only species of concern in New Mexico’s oil-rich southeastern region. The Center for Biological Diversity has also pushed for protections of the dunes sagebrush lizard, a small, light-brown lizard that was listed as endangered in 2024 and lives in eastern New Mexico and west Texas.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued over the lizard’s listing. The lawsuit called the rule protecting the lizard improperly vague “due to its failure to provide the public with adequate guidance regarding activities that can and cannot occur within the dunes sagebrush lizard’s large geographic range, which overlaps with the Permian Basin — an economically vital area for the state of Texas.”
The Center for Biological Diversity filed a request to intervene in the lawsuit to defend the lizard’s listing. That request was denied, a decision the center is appealing.
Nowicki has visited New Mexico’s Permian Basin region looking for the dunes sagebrush lizard.
“It was striking how diverse and fragile the ecosystems are down in what I think a lot of folks think of as a pretty beat up landscape,” he said.
State mulls ownership of historic Nob Hill church – Oliver Uyttebrouck, Albuquerque Journal
An iconic church that has graced Albuquerque's Nob Hill neighborhood for three-quarters of a century may soon belong to the state of New Mexico.
The pastor of Immanuel Presbyterian Church posted a statement on the church's website this week announcing that the congregation voted in December to donate the historic building in lieu of paying for costly renovations.
"On December 14, 2025, the congregation voted unanimously to donate the building to the State of New Mexico, affirming a shared commitment to preserving this treasured site as a public asset for future generations," the Rev. Drew Henry said in the statement posted Monday.
"We expect the donation process to be completed in the first half of 2026," he wrote.
The decision was prompted by the high cost of needed renovations to the historic structure.
"Following a comprehensive professional architectural assessment, the congregation has arrived at the difficult conclusion that it does not have adequate resources to complete the extensive renovations required to preserve the historic structure," said Henry, who could not be reached for further comment this week.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and two state lawmakers said this week that the church's future has been under discussion for more than a year as the congregation has wrestled with the issue of renovations.
"We are in discussions about an acquisition of this church property, but the details are still being negotiated," Michael Coleman, a spokesman for Lujan Grisham, said in an email. He offered no additional details about the proposed donation.
The Territorial Revival structure in the heart of Albuquerque's historic Nob Hill neighborhood at 114 Carlisle SE, just south of Central, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2011.
The legendary New Mexico architect John Gaw Meem was hired in 1948 to design the church, which was built in three phases from 1949 to 1956, according to U.S. Department of the Interior records. The original 10,000-square-foot building was dedicated in 1950 and a 3,000-square-foot classroom addition was completed in 1951.
The 25,000-square-foot sanctuary and bell tower, dedicated in 1956, serve as a performance venue for musical groups. A 2,333-pipe Casavant Frères organ was installed in 1965.
State Sen. Antoinette Sedillo Lopez and state Rep. Marianna Anaya, both Albuquerque Democrats, secured $200,000 in capital improvement funding in 2025 to study potential uses for the building.
"This is a highlight of my district," Sedillo Lopez said of the church. "I will do, personally, what I can as a state senator to preserve that building and to open it up to the community."
The state would need to identify a fiscal agent, likely Albuquerque or Bernalillo County, because the state can't provide funding to a church, she said. Sedillo Lopez said she has been aware for more than a year that Henry is seeking ways to preserve the building.
"He really wants the community to make use of this wonderful space, and so does the congregation," she said.
Anaya said the congregation wants the property to become a community space. Anaya and Sedillo Lopez jointly sought capital improvement funding, she said.
"We funded it with the understanding that it was to be developed into some sort of a community center," Anaya said.
A key decision facing the congregation is the future of its ministry, Henry said in the statement.
"The congregation is currently engaged in a thoughtful process to discern the future shape and location of its ministry, with additional details to be shared as decisions are finalized," Henry said. "While we leave our church building with certain sadness, we also do so with gratitude, hope, and joyful anticipation for the new life and purpose it will serve in the community."