I received word Friday from a reader that another sign from a long-defunct Route 66 motel was taken down and hauled away.
Here’s the email I received from Keith Kofford:
Grants lost another Route 66 sign last week (9-10-19) when the Los Alamitos Motel sign was taken. A crew with large equipment was spotted by a Grants citizen and when he went back later, the sign was gone — only about 4-feet of the steel posts remained. No one knows who took the sign but the city told the newspaper it wasn’t them and they don’t know who took it.
The image above is the sign in November 2017. Below is what’s left, with the two sawed-off posts:
The updated list of Route 66 signs that have disappeared in the past year or so:
- Two Club Cafe signs in Santa Rosa, New Mexico
- Sahara Lounge sign in Santa Rosa
- Los Alamitos Motel sign in Grants, New Mexico
- Grants Cafe sign in Grants
- Cactus RV Park sign in Tucumcari, New Mexico
- Paradise Motel sign in Tucumcari
A long, complicated story about the sign issue was published here earlier this month. It seems likely Garcia Automotive Group of Albuquerque acquired the Los Alamitos sign for its expanding collection for a planned neon graveyard in the city. However, that is not confirmed. An Albuquerque source checked the Garcias’ storeyard for the signs and didn’t see the Los Alamitos sign there.
Regardless, I’ll keep saying this until I’m blue in the face: This will keep happening until towns enact a landmarking ordinance to protect their historic Route 66 signs.
I’ve been unable to find any history on the Los Alamitos Motel. The motel itself was gone about 20 years ago. If anyone knows anything else, chime in with comments below.
(Images courtesy of Keith Kofford)
Sign grabbin’ is becoming an epidemic crisis.
“Regardless, I’ll keep saying this until I’m blue in the face: This will keep happening until towns enact a landmarking ordinance to protect their historic Route 66 signs.”
I totally agree with you, Ron. It seems curious that someone would have sufficient interest to contact you, but not stop to ask where the sign was going. Or even – if concerned that the removers were acting illegally – at least making a note of the vehicle(s) registration plate(s) and it/their description(s) along with those doing the removing.
Having said that, I have been at fault in the past in not taking note of likely wrong doing and wrong doers.
The latest theft “epidemic” in the UK is stealing catalytic converters from vehicles parked in the road, in car parks or on driveways. 2,894 were stolen in London in the first six months of 2019.
These people who are buying them and taking them away are Trophy Hunters– this must be stopped!!!
Leave the signs, take photos!!!
the route 66 industry is threatened . I’m in OK and anxious to see 66 to LA. the day will come when there’s little to see and fewer will travel. businesses along the way will suffer. I stopped at Rock Cafe yesterday and no one was there. maybe it too was late…around 6 pm…but for a saturday?
This is a very sad situation in New Mexico. The only way to remedy this is for Garcia Brothers to put the signs back where they used to be (in a little better working condition) and help to create maintenance fund for the upkeep of the neon signs. If the Garcia Brothers want cool neon signs in their new restaurant, they should have some cool reproduction signs made.
The problem everyone here misses is that these signs are owned by private individuals. You cannot control what they do with them. Enact all the landmarking ordinances you want, but you cannot ultimately control what the private owner does with them. Its like declaring a site or a building a historic landmark … people think that provides it some protection from being torn down or changed. It does not. It is simply stating that this specific place has historic value and should be preserved and recognized for what it is. I can show you a dozen sites in my hometown where something got a historic designation – and what was declared historic is no longer there. Read the Federal codes if you don’t believe me.
For any type of landmarking ordinance to ever work with signs, there needs to be major tax breaks and incentives attached to it to provide the owner incentive to keep the sign in place and hopefully return it to its original glory. But in this time of lessening funds for everything, I don’t see that happening anytime soon and signs are going to continue to disappear. We can only hope that the Garcia group does go ahead with a museum of some sort so they are still able to be viewed by all and that other buyers put them somewhere, some way on public display as well – as distressing as that is to most all roadies.
In the UK there is “listed building” status, which prevents alterations to the structure. Such listing would ban the removal of original signs of the type that are disappearing from motels, etc on Route 66.
The Sign Belonged to my family. My great grandfather built the hotel in the 50s and it closed when the mines were shut down. I’ve always wanted to restore it. If anyone knows where It could be I would greatly appreciate it. Email is Nikoelijah1@gmail.com
My grandfathers name was Julien Blea
“A crew with large equipment was spotted by a Grants citizen and when he went back later, the sign was gone — only about 4-feet of the steel posts remained.”
So this not so smart citizen saw what was happening, thought nothing suspicious of it, and did not take the licence plate numbers of the vehicles involved, nor phone the police. Did the vehicles with all that “large equipment” not have company names on them?