Cuervo, New Mexico

Cuervo, New Mexico

Our passion for exploring ghost towns and places time has forgotten led us to stop at an abandoned town we noticed while on a road trip along I-40 a few miles west of Tucumcari. Motorists speed by the forgotten town hardly noticing so much history just a few yards off the super highway.

A freeway now runs through the old rail road and cattle ranching town of Cuervo, NM which once was a prosperous community of about 300 residents Prosperity came to Cuervo at the turn -of-the - century when Southern Pacific Rail Road came through, cattle ranching soon followed creating a thriving town which continued to grow throughout the years. When the famous Route 66 came through, the towns people catered to travelers providing a place to rest at the hotels, and fill up their automobiles with gasoline . Like so many towns, along the Mother Road Cuervo was left in the dust of progress when Route 66 was replaced with Interstate 40 , which cuts through the center, dividing the town in half.

By the 1970s the community which once bustled with activity as a rail road town began its descent to a ghost town status. The population dramatically diminished as residents moved away to find a better life.

On the south side of the interstate the remains of a few business buildings and a once busy barber shop with the upheavaled chairs inside the door-less and window-less building line what once was a main street. Crumbling rock and adobe buildings reduced to rubble litter the landscape . The brick catholic church built in the 1940s is well-kept and shows visible signs of being used, probably by the four or five families who still call this home, tenaciously clinging to their roots, buried so deep in their homeland.

Although we didn’t explore the north side of the freeway, from a distance we could see crumbling, historic ruins and relics of the past.

For a moment time stood still as I reflected on what life must have been like on these arid high plains when the town of Cuervo, New Mexico was new.