Tucumcari motel has a new owner

Nita and John Berryhill of Globe, Ariz., are now the new owners of the Motel Safari on Route 66 in Tucumcari, N.M., reports the Quay County Sun.

At Motel Safari, “We’re going to try and keep all the old 50s and 60s flavor and all the furniture,” said Nita, pointing to a decorative room divider and chair from the era.

Nita said she will be commuting for several months to oversee renovations. Her husband, a shop foreman and master mechanic at an automotive shop, will work in Globe until the hotel is ready for the couple to live, she said. 

Nita also is well-experienced in the motel business.

“I grew up in a motel,” she said. “I was raised by my grandparents and they had a motel.

In fact, she continued to operate the El Ray Motel on Arizona Highway 60 East after her grandparents died in 1995. She sold the motel a year ago. But not long after, she discovered she wanted to get back in the hospitality business.

…

“I looked at the business in the town and the fact that the big hotels were here meant that there was business. So in that sense, I thought it was favorable,” Nita Berryhill said.

“I don’t see them as competition because the people who stay in those hotels are not here to see Route 66. They’re really not competition. People traveling along Route 66 want to to stay in the small family-owned motels,” she said.

Here's a vintage postcard of the Safari, complete with its camel-rider sign. Here's a more-recent photo.