The photo at the top of the page was taken in November 1980 at Amboy, CA when I was a 16 year old. Some friends (still!) had generously hauled this high school student from Davis, CA along on my first visit to the ATSF Needles District.
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One of the original U.S. highways, US 66 was fully completed on November 11, 1926. Across the southwest, from New Mexico to California, US 66 essentially followed the Santa Fe. The two are intertwined across nearly a thousand miles of the southwest. Somewhere along the Santa Fe, now BNSF Transcon, near Route 66 is a underpass with graffiti dating to the earliest days of US 66.
Sheltered from the sun and moisture the inscriptions of early travelers persist to today. Are these messages from up to 84 years ago from US 66 travelers? railroad workers? hobos? local ranch hands? A combination of all of these? We will never know for sure. The fact that the earliest inscriptions in the 1923 built underpass date to within two months of the opening of US 66 in late 1926 and the facts that many of the names on the walls are from women and there seems to be clusters of names from the same towns (San Antonio, Los Angeles, Albuquerque) suggest to me that they were largely the work of early US 66 travelers. Whatever the origin, they are fun to read. There seem to be fewer dates after 1939, but there are a few; 1943, 1958… 1980.
It is easy to imagine early travelers seeking shade or shelter from weather in the underpass. Standing in the dark, dusty tumbleweed filled underpass, you wonder if anything in the scene has changed in 84 years.
