Glenrio, Texas and New Mexico
The empty town of Glenrio sits on the state line which separates Texas and New Mexico, a ghost town which occupies both states. Once thriving it owes its status of a ghost town to the demise of fabled US 66, which was born out of the Ozark Trail in 1926. Glenrio in both states owed much of its growth to the highway, which it supported with filling stations, restaurants, motels, and autocamps. In some ways the town was in neither state, avoiding the laws and taxes of one by placing certain types of businesses in the portion of town located in the other.
For example, Deaf Smith County Texas was a dry county in the 1930s, even after Prohibition was rescinded, and the State Line Bar was built in Glenrio on the New Mexico side of the border, which was not. New Mexico’s gasoline taxes were higher than those of their Texas neighbors, so gasoline stations were located on the Texas side of the line. Both states claimed the entire town to be located within their boundaries from time to time, but the situation remains as it has been since New Mexico became a state, the result of a surveying error.
When Interstate 40 was built it bypassed Glenrio by a few yards to the north. Without the traffic which flowed directly through the town on Route 66 there was no longer any reason to stop there. The section of Route 66 which had traveled through the town is now designated as Business I-40, and in New Mexico it becomes a gravel road at the border, due to New Mexico’s removal of the paving as a cost saving measure. Without through traffic the town began to decline quickly.
The main section of Glenrio is now the Glenrio Historic site, uninhabited, and consisting of more than a dozen buildings which offer a glimpse of the town as it was during the heyday of US 66, which was the main route to the west for more than sixty years. Among them is the Stateline Hotel which greeted an eastbound driver with a sign which read “First in Texas.” A driver heading west would read “Last in Texas.” Some of the buildings are well preserved while others are overgrown with weeds and displaying the signs of neglect and decay.
Glenrio is an example of a mid-twentieth century ghost town, with most of it offering sights familiar to the eye, particularly to those from smaller towns. It is possible from the differing styles of architecture to spot the times when the town was enjoying growth, and when it fell into hard times. It is not fully abandoned, an office is maintained in the Texas Longhorn Motel. One of the enduring mysteries of Glenrio is that not only does it straddle two states, its name straddles two languages, “glen” from Gaelic and “rio” from Spanish. Glen is a word for a valley and Rio for river. Glenrio features neither.