This year, we are celebrating November with gratitude. Today I(Rosy) am thankful for spontaneous day trips!
Last week, the pawrents decided a Road Trip was in order. I am so very thankful I got to go with them!
(Sunny stayed home to protect the house from rogue squirrels)
They wanted to go someplace fun, but not to far away...so we revisited Grants, New Mexico!
You might remember that we visited Grants with CeCe earlier this year. We saw lots of Lava, a volcano and an ice cave! This visit, we saw a totally different side of Grants.
The Route 66 and Railroad side!
Grants actually began like a lot of the other New Mexico train towns. A trio of brothers named Grant were given a contract to build part of the Atlantic/Pacific Railroad. It was settled as Grants Camp in the 1880's and evolved into Grant City, and finally ended up as just Grants.
In the 1920s, the main business in Grants was railroad logging transporting timber from the Zuni forest to Albuquerque. After the logging boom ended, the area dabbled in farming(even becoming the Carrot Capital) and Uranium Mining.
They still have trains running through the town, but mostly known as the Gateway to Lavaland. If you missed our post about Grants lava beds you can read it HERE
Route 66 ran through Grants and helped draw visitors to the
area until Interstate 40 was built. Unfortunately, most of the hotels, shops and restaurants built for expected tourism have now shut down.
It was a beautiful little town to take a nice leisurely walk!
Luckily they had a KFC, so I got a little chicken snack before we headed home!
We had a great little road trip and are thankful to be able to visit and learn more about the small towns in New Mexico!
We are joining Sandee at Comedy Plus for the
Happy Tuesday Blog Hop this week!
That's quite a trajectory, from railroad/logging town to Carrot City, to uranium mining to Route 66 tourism!
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