The story
Glenrio straddles the state line so exactly that its famous motel sign read 'First Motel in Texas' from one direction and 'Last Motel in Texas' from the other. A rail siding first, it lived its real life as a Route 66 pit stop — gas, cafés, and motor courts serving the river of postwar traffic.
Interstate 40 bypassed it in 1973 and Glenrio died with the decade — one of the purest examples of an interstate killing a road town. The whole strip is now a National Register historic district: the motel, the streamline café, pumps rusting under the enormous Llano sky, and a couple of stubborn residents.
What remains today
The First/Last Motel, café and station ruins, and the old 66 roadbed itself — a fully legible strip town in decay.
From the archives
Glenrio turns up on 262 digitized newspaper pages from Texas — read them free in the Library of Congress's Chronicling America collection.
Source: Library of Congress digital collections.
Questions from the field
- Which state is Glenrio in?
- Both — the line runs through town. The post office was in New Mexico, the motel in Texas, and the bar was built on whichever side had friendlier liquor laws at the time.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
Stamp your passport
Check in at Glenrio — GPS-verified visits earn an inked stamp.
File a field report
Road conditions, what's still standing, what's gone — your report joins the record.
Add photographs
Credited, dated, and preserved as part of Glenrio's permanent record.
No field reports yet — sign in to file the first.
Primary sources for this record
- — USGS GNIS feature 915829
- — NRHP — Glenrio Historic District
- — Route 66 corridor studies