450 years ago the Spanish used this trail as they founded Santa Fe, at first driving heavy muled-powered wheeled carts up from Chihuahua. The trip took about 6 months (today: 8 hours). The carts frequently broke and sensibly the Spanish forwent the carts and eventually used just the mules. While known officially as El Camino Tierra Adentro, it now is more commonly known as El Camino Real, a much more promotable name.
After Mexico ceded New Mexico to the US, the Army needed a better way to ascend the descent and substantially improved the Spanish road up La Bajada about 150 years ago. A bit more than 100 years ago, as the auto brought tourists to New Mexico, the road was improved and called Hwy 1. Perhaps called Hwy 1 because it was the only highway in New Mexico at the time. Don't know for sure, just speculating but it enhances my story. This is the road seen in the photos.
Well, tourism was great and this led to the famous Route 66, which followed Hwy 1 between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. Hwy 1 down La Bajada was too treacherous and so convicts built a bypass in 1928. The bypass was still overly dangerous and in 1932 the highway was relocated a few miles to the east, where it lives today as part of I-25.
While you can in theory still drive on the old Hwy 1 descent, it hasn't been maintained since 1932. It's in terrible shape. Don't try it.
In the early 1930's, shortly after the last relocation, Route 66 itself was re-routed to completely bypass Santa Fe. Seems a Ring of Republicans from Santa Fe ran the state and when a Democrat was elected Governor, he quickly caused this main tourism road to bypass the capital just to twit the clique. Funny thing is that today Santa Fe is very Democratic and the Republican governor would love to do something similar, except that would be far too much like work and if there is anything Susana is good at, it's avoiding work.
Back to 1930, when Santa Fe had no electrical service. A small municipal power company had provided power for a few years from a small generator located in the city, but they went bankrupt and the light bulb went out. Power was brought up from the Albuquerque area along Hwy 1 by constructing the ZB power lines. For their time, these were very high tech lines: a very early use of aluminum cables whose lighter weight allowed the innovative metal power poles to be located 500 feet apart, a huge improvement on the normal 50 foot spacing of the older wooden poles. ZB brought a whopping 46 kVA to Santa Fe. The lines are still in use but will be decommissioned whenever PNM gets around to it.
Today this portion of the old and ancient road is Forest Road 24. Rutted and muddy when it rains, it sees about 10 cars per day, which is probably about an order of magnitude busier than the colonial Spanish era.
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| Forest Road 24 and Historic Route 66 |
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| The old Hwy 1 descent down La Bajada. Not Recommended for RVs |
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| If you make it this far, you might be tempted to try to go down the descent. Don't. |
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| The ZB power lines running along FR 24 / Hwy 66. Santa Fe and the Sangre de Cristos in the distance. |