The purpose and scope of a long-proposed Route 66 Museum and Visitor Center in Los Lunas, New Mexico, became clearer after hearing opinions from residents during a recent meeting.
The museum will be west of the historic Luna Mansion on Main Street on a 1926 to 1937 alignment of Route 66 that went south from Albuquerque before resuming its westward direction to Los Angeles. The village purchased the property for the museum in 2015.
The University of New Mexico’s School of Architecture and Planning students led the forum with residents to prioritize what they want with the museum. The Valencia County News-Bulletin reported:
The permanent collection of the museum would be the core physical artifacts, photos and memorabilia on display which are typically found in museums.
The ability to have flexible exhibits allows for things like visiting collections and creating space for other events, such as meetings or even weddings.
Space would be set aside for events, such as classes and other events, and an outdoor gathering space could be used for things like movie nights or pop-up events with food trucks. […]
The focus will be on the under-told local stories of the areas mostly Hispanic agricultural communities and how the route impacted them, Callahan told the News-Bulletin last year.
The property where the museum will be built is the site of the long-closed Country Inn, which contains a historic building where the museum likely will be housed. A perusal on Google Street View of the property west of the Luna Mansion reveals an adobe structure there, but whether that’s the future museum structure is uncertain.
A look into Newspapers.com shows the Country Inn bar in Los Lunas opened in 1946. I was unable to find when when the bar closed, but the archive shows it was operating to at least 1993.
The village told the newspaper it hopes to hire a contractor to build the museum in 2020.
With Albuquerque also planning a Route 66 visitors center on its west side less than 30 miles away, Las Lunas officials had better plan its museum carefully and make it distinctive for it to be viable.
(Image of Los Lunas, New Mexico, by teofilo via Flickr)