Traveling Route 66 with Willie Lambert

Willie Lambert at Nuestra Senora de Luz Church

Article by Hanna Churchwell
Originally published July 28, 2023

On July 22, 2023, tour participants boarded a shuttle bus downtown and embarked on a tour of Route 66 east of Santa Fe to Romeroville guided by Willie Lambert. An active participant in the most cherished traditions of Route 66, Lambert first started researching the road and its original alignment after his sister told him, “When I turn 66, I want to cruise Route 66.” Lambert promised her he would look into it, and almost two decades later he is still investigating the route. There are portions of the original Route 66 in New Mexico, dating back to 1926, that we still traverse; however, many segments are now on private property, existing as someone’s driveway, a stray patch of paved road in the grass, or a scar that can be traced through the tree lines on either side of the interstate. 

Aboard the shuttle bus Lambert launched into the history of Route 66 and the land it passed through, covering Hannett’s joke–Governor Arthur Hannett’s 31-day rush to spite the incoming Governor Richard Dillon by building a road to Albuquerque that bypassed Dillon’s home of Encino–as well as the Gettysburg of the West–pointing out the surrounding Civil War battlefields and the 20th-century outsider art memorializing New Mexico’s Civil War veterans along Route 66. The road led to many churches, first Nuestra Senora de Luz Church on Sleeping Dog Road in Cañoncito–photogenic with a small window high up under the bell canopy and an orange-red shed roof. San Jose Church and Capilla Santa Rita de Cascia in Bernal followed. These small chapels, unique to their communities, dotted Route 66. Tour participants also saw once-booming motor courts, general stores, bars, and the remnants of the Route 66 bridge over Tecolote Creek in Tecolote. The tour made two longer stops to visit the collections at Casa Escuela in Glorieta and Pecos National Historical Park.

In a few years, Route 66 will turn 100. Lambert's tour is good fun, but it is also partly a call to research and preserve the original alignment and the communities that served its travelers.