From Ada, OK we headed west across the rest of Oklahoma, through Texas....
...seeing the world famous Leaning Water Tower of Britten....
....then into New Mexico.
There in New Mexico, we stopped for a couple days in Tucumcari. We had learned that Ann's grand parents that we had just researched in Ada, were married here by a Judge in 1911. So, we decided to visit here and see what we could find! Don't let the exit sign fool you. It is a town that once was grand, but is no more. When the railroad pulled out and Route 66 was replaced by I-40, the town dwindled rapidly starting in the late 1950's. It is a skeleton of it's former self!
We got to town after the court house closed, but before we wanted to call it a night, so we found the local theater and attended a movie. It was a theater house right out of the 1940's. It was quaint.... and for sale! $65,000 and you could own your own theater with a sound and projection system that matches its age. After the show (Green Lantern) we spent the night in Camp K-Mart, Our air conditioner stopped working a few days ago and with the days hovering around 108 degrees, we were grateful for this evening's little breeze.
The next morning we toured town a little, viewing some of its attempt at a historical come back.
There we 56 murals in this little town! All commemorated its past. It was begun in 1904 and was a booming town until the late 1950's. Now, it is just a blink of an eye as you drive by on I-40.
We went to the air conditioned (Everybody say ahhhhhhh!) court house and got to work. We found the marriage applications, licenses and certificates for Ann's grandparents and for her grand mother's sister. We also found the deed to 260+ acres that her great grandparents, John and Sarah Rice, recorded for land that they had homesteaded here. We later found a lease deed where they leased the mineral rights to a local oil company and then later the land was sold in two parts. We used a local cartographer to locate the property for us by using the legal description. We then went to the public library and read up on the history of the town and researched the schools. We found that Ann's grandmother had taught elementary school here too, before she married Ann's Grandpa.
We found in the library that the school building still stood, but it was now a historical center. It was closed when we got there. We had scanned a picture of the school as it looked in 1906 and then took this picture as it stands now. We also learned that the old court house where her grandparents had been married had burned down, so we could not get a picture of that.
We then drove out to find the property they had homesteaded. It was the land located between these two mountains and beyond a little.
Here is a close up from on top of the trailer. There were no roads out to the property at this time.
As you can see, it was desert like. It is now used as cattle grazing property.
After Tucumcari, we drove west to Hidden Valley RV Park in Tijeras, New Mexico. It rained most of the night. We were grateful for the cooler weather. We actually pulled a sheet over us this night!!!
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