Chapter 53 | Fading Transmissions from a Republic of Ruins, Part III
Glenrio Ghost Town
Glenrio, NM
Note: This is part II of a mini-series that I’m releasing on the blog about my recent road trip across the country. I managed to visit a plethora of abandoned spaces and decided to focus on writing about four of them. For context, please start with Parts I and II here and here.
There’s a moment, driving west on I-40, out of Texas, when the air changes. You feel it before you notice it: the sky opens, the ground dries, and the horizon morphs into a psychedelic mushroom trip.
The desert begins.
I soften my gaze and think of the dairy farm from my childhood, the genesis of this project— the sound of rain on the roof, the way my imagination was always a soft place to land, even at six years old. In my fantasy, every room in that dairy farm felt like it had a story I could step into. Out here on I-40, the rooms are miles wide, whole stretches of highway littered by forgotten towns and neighborhoods.
Out here, ghosts don’t have names anymore; they’re just part of the land.
As the New Mexico border approaches, the hum of the interstate starts to sound like something else — not cars, not engines — something older. Something fading, but not gone, a transmission of poetry.
A sonnet about a border town between Texas and New Mexico.
Welcome to Glenrio.
“I was here,” the ghost town Glenrio insists as curdles of dust sway with the incessant rhythm of I-40 just off the horizon, while the sun sets on the border between Texas and New Mexico.
“Were you, though?” America replies.
Because Glenrio lies buried under forgotten memory — and the long shadows cast by the abandonment of Route 66. Founded in 1903 as Rock Island, later renamed Glenrio by the Rock Island & Pacific Railroad, the border town hot spot didn’t even reach its 80th birthday. It’s the same old pattern that takes the blame in America: the interstate highway system. You can also blame local infighting, geography. Or maybe just blame time.
Even its name, stitched together from “glen” (Scottish for “valley”) and “río” (Spanish for “river”), feels like an identity crisis.
It was — and remains — a disagreement among generations of locals.
Which state owns the eastern portion of the town, or what’s left of it?
Not that it matters anymore.
Glenrio follows up wistfully: “As I said, I was here.”
“But you’re not anymore,” America laughs.
The thing is — I don’t know if I can agree with America on that, Glenrio. Sure, you may not be incorporated anymore. Maybe you slipped fully into ghost-town status by 1975 after I-40 bulldozed through and robbed you of all commerce. And yes, your exit is now simply a novelty pit stop for gas and weed, a border-town dispensary that somehow brought more ruin to your revelry, despite serving as a new economic driver.
And yes, it’s highly possible that most people will glance at the abandoned gas stations on the edge of town and stare right through them as they dissociate into their iPhone 17s or their Android Plus Mega Extras.
Yes, it’s exceedingly likely, my fair Glenrio, that you will never “become” again, not in the way you once were.
“Does that mean I’m no longer beautiful?” Glenrio asks. “It seems like I have nothing to offer you anymore.”
No, my friend. I wrote this prayer for you, at the Inn at Roswell, sandwiched between a Walgreens and a Best Western, waiting for my turn to hang out with aliens and listen to drag-race drivers tear down North Main Street. For indeed, Glenrio, as I watched the orange and purple sky glow under the fallen embers of the Epstein files and ashes of the Affordable Care Act — the latest casualties of our collective social and cultural history — I thought of you, fondly, despite the fact that you claimed so audaciously that you “have nothing to offer” me.
Glenrio, I’m here to tell you — and your beat-to-hell main street, the millionth grave marker of America’s Route 66 — that simply ain’t true.
You aren’t dead. Not yet.
In fact, you might be just beginning. Because long after I’ve rejoined that orange and purple cosmos, long after my last breath, you’ll still be here, staring up at the sky. Whether or not your buildings or their ruins or the ghosts that once occupied them or even the grandiose “Welcome to New Mexico” overpass sign remain, you’ll still be here. We angels up in heaven may not be able to distinguish your once-distinguishable features — the old motor inn, the gas station, the post office, the Rock Island & Pacific Railroad station — but we’ll remember your stories.
You had so many — have so many. For that one moment of pause that you gave me while the world as I know it gets sucked up into the classist vacuum of American politics, I offer you this prayer of gratitude.
You’re still beautiful, and yes. You still offered me something, yes. And I see you, yes. An abandoned border-town stop, once billed as “The last motel in Texas and the first in New Mexico,” that looks so evaporated and peaceful in the mourning light of the golden hour.
To leave Glenrio is to leave behind a new best friend you’ll never see again — the kind of friend you meet by accident, maybe on a plane, or bumping into them as a kid inside an abandoned dairy farm. Maybe they strike up the conversation first. Maybe you do. Maybe you both start talking at the exact same time, then laugh, and say, “No, you go first — no, you,” because there’s nothing else to do but giggle.
As you wander the wreckage wherever you meet, for that one small moment, your temporary best friend asks where you’re headed.
“Oh, just… wandering. You?”
They don’t answer. It seems delicate, so you leave it. You talk about other things instead — like the fact that New Mexico just launched childcare for all, the first law of its kind in the United States.
“Wish I’d had that in my day,” they sigh. “Would’ve made life a lot easier.”
You agree, but you don’t have children. Your siblings do, so you get it. As you and your temporary best friend poke around, you start to realize:
You’re never going to see them again. Maybe they’re a ghost anyway.
That’s what leaving Glenrio feels like — as though I’m leaving behind a temporary best friend, a stranger who doesn’t know me, no conclusions to jump to, just a handshake at dusk on the border between two states. I’d never heard of you before, never thought we’d meet, and we likely won’t ever seen each other again, although never say never.
That’s the thing about strangers: you never have enough time with them.
I guess that’s the point.
