An early image of La Bajada Hill

Take a look at the above photo. It’s a photograph of a circa-1922 Dodge Bros. Touring Car at La Bajada Hill, southwest of Santa Fe, N.M.

Date of the image is unknown, but likely before Route 66 was certified in 1926.

The back of the photo read:

Ma and Dad. This is at the top of the Hairpin turns. It is all graded up fine now and has a rock wall all the way down on the outer edge and room for two cars to pass all the way. Some difference than when we went over it the first time.

“The first time” was 1922, when the G.H. Hammond family moved from Durango, Colo., to Pomona, Calif. Having that part  of the road improved was a big deal, as this postcard of La Bajada Hill from the early 1920s shows. Navigating those switchbacks in early cars wouldn’t have been fun:

Much of the Hammond family’s path — including the descent of La Bajada Hill — was the eventual Route 66.

Mike McCulley of Montesano, Wash., sent me the black-and-white photo.

He also sent a transcript of a 1980 interview of his mother, Marjorie Hammond McCulley, by her sister, Marian Hammond Pearce, about the 1922 trip. Marjorie was 12 at the time of the big journey, and Marian was 2.

The interview offers a fascinating glimpse of the Mother Road a few years before it officially existed. Here are relevant excerpts:

Marjorie: We had to take a lot of food with us because there weren’t any places along the way to eat, and we were going across really uninhabited land -across the Navajo reservation, for example. […] We were going through an area where there were very few towns at all because we went from Durango right across New Mexico. I don’t remember where we — I guess we went to Gallup, that would be where we’d get the transcontinental road, and in those days that was a long, slow road. We had to carry water, not a whole lot probably, but still it was a desert situation. And I can remember we had some home-cured bacon. Very basic things, and there was nothing dehydrated or canned. Our meals would be like bacon and potatoes […]

I’m sure we had sandwiches of some kind at noon. But it was quite a problem to find water when we did get to where it was true desert. Even at filling stations you had to pay for the water because the water was hauled in on railway tank cars. So you paid by the gallon for water to drink and for the radiator.

Marian: And there weren’t too many filling stations, I imagine?

Marjorie: Oh, no. Probably they took some extra gasoline along, I would guess. The car was very well loaded. The car had running boards so there were chests on the running boards, and everything was packed very compactly. The car was weighted down, and there had to be a lot of tools for repairing the car. As a matter of fact, the car had to be repaired on the way, and we had to send for a part.

Again, you had to stay very independent. And so there were mechanic’s tools and the camping gear. There was nothing like a sleeping bag. We took regular quilts and things like that. The tires were poor, and you had to take kits to patch tires along the way.

Marian: Was it called Highway 66 then, or was it just “the east-west road”?

Marjorie: It probably was. We had a long way before we got to that. I really don’t remember the surface of the road when we were in New Mexico and Arizona, but I do know that they were working on the road. So there were a lot of detours that were pretty horrendous.

Also, one of the things we had to be careful of, there were very few bridges. What you’d do was go down one slope and up the other slope. Of course, at that time of year there didn’t happen to be any water, but they were very aware of flash flood danger. We were probably going 15 miles an hour most of the way. The roads were very, very difficult, so that was a real problem.

Marian: What did you do? Just camp beside the road?

Marjorie: Yes, that’s all. There were a few campgrounds that I vaguely remember but not true campgrounds until we got into California. The first one that I really remember was at Victorville, and that’s where Grandpa Boyce found us. But along the way, this may have been when we had to order the car part, and I can’t remember what it was -a gear kind of thing – we stayed for, I think, two weeks in Holbrook. We had to go there and wait. Also, there was a partly finished building there that was waiting for someone to come by down the road, who knew how to wire it for electric lights and everything. That was something that Daddy knew how to do, and, of course, it was a way to make some money. So I think we stayed in that unfinished building instead of camping out. I think we did our camping inside this. As I recall, it was just like a big store -empty room. We stayed long enough for him to put in whatever lighting system they wanted.

Marian: Was there much traffic back and forth on the road?

Marjorie: No, very little. You were really on your own. We did rescue one car. It was a very elegant car, and, of course, the parents were sure they were bootleggers because it was an elegant car, and the people had money. In those days you didn’t ever take money for doing people a favor. I can’t remember what was done, but it was only because we came along that their car was repaired.

Marian: They were just at the side of the road waiting?

Marjorie: Yes, they were completely stalled. I don’t know how long they had been waiting when we got there. The woman in the car, when we got to civilization -we stayed together until we got into a town -to be nice to us bought us each a Hershey bar, which, I am sure, were 10 times the size of the Hershey bars today. And we sort of thought, “Oh, gee whiz, she thinks she’s so great,” because Grandma Hammond had given us a whole box of Hershey bars to take on the trip. Well, of course, we took them very gracefully and enjoyed them, but she didn’t know our secret. She thought we were in poverty.

But there were very few people on the road. I don’t remember any bad weather. That is, there were no sudden desert sandstorms or rain showers or anything. I think we must have been very lucky.

Marian: Then you all went to Watts together? Was that more than a day’s trip, do you suppose? It must have been.

Marjorie: I’m sure it was. It would have taken at least two days, I think, from Victorville, because, you see, you are still traveling on very poor gravel roads across the desert.

Marian: And over the [Cajon] pass?

Marjorie: At least we would have been coming down the pass, which would have been the big thing. But at that time it was the old Cajon road. I don’t know if you remember how steep it was, with switchbacks. Even coming down hill it would have been hazardous because brakes were poor at that time.

I can remember that it was a very winding, narrow road, very steep and, of course, having your brakes burn out was a hazard in those days. They really did burn out. You could see the charring.

When we got down to the bottom of Cajon pass, there was a nice campground, a picnic ground. It would be near San Bernardino, I think. There were a lot of trees there. It was quite pretty and very welcome because we had been out in the desert area. That might have been the end of one day. […]

So anyway we went in there, and the reason it stayed in my mind so much is that it was a very nice place. There were cement picnic tables with cement benches around them, and these had all been bought by service clubs, contributed.

The parents were so impressed because we found the table that the Elks had given. But now when I go down Cajon Pass, the floods have wiped out every trace of all these trees. The campground area is totally gone.

The entire transcript can be downloaded as an eight-page Word document here.