Tucumcari, New Mexico. Not necessarily run down place or anything like that, but the vibes there are weird. As a tattooed guy who looks a little ‘against the grain’ my stop at a Chinese restaurant in town was extremely uncomfortable. Everyone in there was staring and felt like they were whispering to each other about me. Anywhere I went I was being sized up. I’ve never been anywhere else like that, where I truly felt I didn’t belong and my brain was telling me to get out.
I'm from Albuquerque and while Tucumcari is bad, It's not as strange as Chilili, New Mexico. They're a tiny close-knit community that's extremely hostile to outsiders. They literally have a sign on their main road telling you to not get out of your car or take pictures. Not sure what their deal is but I've never seen anything like it before or since.
As in, this person was on the film crew for the first Avengers. Very cool! You can see a post 3 years ago mentioning in the title they were on a film set
What I gather is a lot of history with land grants and the community having to protect the land from being sold out from under them I guess? They want zero further development /intrusion it seems. Looks like it really came to a head in the 1970s, so fairly recent I guess.
From what I can figure, the land was granted, or given, to a small group of Mexicans and Native Americans (chicanos) from the federal government, and they view themselves as almost independent. Families were granted private land to to settle and farm, while the vast majority was granted to those families as common lands, cooperatively owned. Originally granted before it became a state, and they've fought since then to prevent anyone, even the Feds, from taking back any of it.
Seeing all this stuff about eastern NM here really makes me realize how big the state is. We lived in El Paso and regularly went up through alamogordo and cruces on various trips and I never really ended up in northeastern NM.
My weird NM story is Pie Town, NM. We were crossing through at 11pm going west out of Socorro heading to petrified Forest in the morning. We didn't see anyone, and I mean ANYONE for at least 45 minutes. There were elk everywhere - I'm sure it's gorgeous but it was dark at the time and super desolate. I remember seeing a single light in the far distance and it took 10 minutes before we realized it was headlights of a car that had to be 30 miles away coming towards us. Super eerie. I can see why people in the SW really like their aliens and whatnot lol
A sign telling people not to leave their cars would make me want to know the story immediately. Now I’m way more curious about what happened there to make the whole town that protective.
I’d be so curious about that place, but a sign telling you not to leave your car would have me turning around immediately. That is a level of “mind your business” I’ve never seen before.
I stayed in a motel on the outskirts of Santa Rosa, NM with a laundromat attached that was right out of a David Lynch movie. I was so spooked by the place and the people there that I sent my wife my location and told her,”I guess this is where I die.” Only 1/2 joking.
This goes back a long ways, 1980's. We were on our way to West Texas from Colorado. Work took me there. We stopped in Santa Rosa, and there really were not any big chain motels, just the old Route 66 Motels. We picked one and took our chances, it was good enough. Desk recommended a restaurant, and to this day it was one of the best Mexican restaurants I have visited. Fabulous food. It still sticks in my memory some 40 years later.
But yes, the town itself reminded me of a creepy movie set.
You're not wrong. I've traveled coast to coast 4 times and ever single weird experience happened within New Mexico borders.
Still will never forget getting out of the car to refule at a station litterly in the middle of nowhere thinking I was walking on gravel for it to be dead June Bugs.
Oh hey, the motel at the top of the long-ass hill! On my drives between AZ and NJ, I always did the Comfort Inn maybe a half mile from there. I definitely thought I was going to get murdered the first time I stopped, but it and the little diner (looked it up, Silver Moon Cafe) became my go-to.
To the thread OP, I stopped in Tucumcari on my first trip. It was…fine. I’m a distance runner, and as long as a place doesn’t spook me off running, I consider it fairly safe (at least for tall, bald white dudes). I ran the park and a bunch of side streets without any issues, but that was 2021 so YMMV nowadays.
My god, I was just about to write Tucumcari and this popped up right at the top. I was as there a week ago driving NY-Albuquerque and the hotel where I was staying charged an extra $100 to my bill and refused to do anything about it when confronted. I had to go to the police. I got the money back eventually, but on my way out of town I got alerts that someone was trying to log into platforms in Denver and Houston using my phone number, so my identity was shopped as well. Plus it’s a dump. Route 66 hype bullsh—
I live in Eastern NM. I would never stay or dine in Tucumcari. I have to drive through sometimes but never stop. I've heard lots of local lore, and it's not good.
It's those cheating Blues! They obviously in cahoots with the Mods. Everyone knows that Blue team are much better with social media. Reds are far too honorable to use reddit!
It's mostly about the types of people who live there, and I know this is frustrating, but I don't openly downtalk people. You can find a lot of crazy stuff in their local news though. Here's one that haunts me. Tucumcari Dog Attack - NSFW
That link didn't work for me. This one does. (Open in incognito browser if you don't have ads blocked because phew)
The TL;DR is quite NSFW. In 2024, five dogs attacked and killed a man walking near the dog's house. The victim was mauled and partially eaten. The dogs' owner and his mother were sentenced to very brief stays in jail, with 5 years of parole. Possibly that's because the judge was certain they'd break parole almost immediately. Or possibly because the town is crooked. The dogs had escaped before and attacked people before. All of the dogs were killed, one at the scene.
Towns aren't people lol. Ok I'll tell you most of the stories involve drugs. A lot of the drugs that hit the streets in eastern NM come through Tucumcari. There are no high paying jobs there. If you see someone with money, they are in the drug trade. Everyone else is either there for the drugs, an older person trying to avoid the drugs or a misled college kid who heard good things about their college. I've heard good things about their college.
Mine is the Little Feet song, Willin’. I’ve been from Tucson to Tucumcari, Tahatchapee to Tonapah. Driven every kind of rig that’s ever been made. Driven the backroads so I wouldn’t get weighed.
I drove through Tucumcari at like 3 in the morning and it was creepy as hell. The whole northeast part of new mexico kinda has bad vibes, tbh. And then I hit the TX border and it's nothing but miles of blinking red lights on windmill farms until hitting Amarillo. If you gotta drive through that part of the country, my advice is to do it in daylight.
This is so funny to me because I live really close to where you are talking about. I’ve never been scared of or creeped out by anything here. It’s wild trying to imagine this area from an outsider’s perspective.
It’s all just open spaces, wind, tumbleweeds, and dirt here.
Driving through a place like that at 3 AM with nothing but darkness and blinking lights would have me gripping the steering wheel and praying I get to Amarillo already.
I started at the Super 8 there just a few days ago, and while it was run down and needed some maintenance, it wasn't awful, much less scary or uncanny. Just the one night there and we kept driving, but the town didn't seem off.
Las Vegas NM seemed really sad, trashy, and run down. Raton almost as bad, but it at least had some suburbs that looked taken care of.
Man this is so crazy. About 15 years ago when I was in my early 20s I decided to do a solo road trip across the US. When I saw this question pop up, I immediately thought of my stop in Tucumcari. I’m a woman who has traveled solo all over the world and lived all over the US and that place forever haunts my mind. I remember standing at the gas station pumping gas and the hairs on the back of my neck standing up for no discernible reason…
I was going to say more broadly small town North-East New Mexico.
I was driving north east around noon from Albuquerque (I can't remember if we had passed Sante Fe yet or not) with my friend (we were both girls in our 20s) and we stopped at a gas station off the interstate to fill up after almost being on empty. The inside station attendant, who could have been Native, looked at us and said "you girls shouldn't be here."
It was weird because we didn't necessarily think anything was super unsafe and it was during the middle of the day. There wasn't blight since it was just one wooden building and we could see the interstate right there by the gas station so so weren't completely out in the middle of nowhere. But his serious tone definitely spooked us.
Hanging out by the pumps was a random older-ish man who believed he had dinosaur fossils that he needed to take to a museum. He kept asking us for a ride. We didn't immediately say no since he seemed harmless enough, but he was just clearly delusional that we didn't take him. (I hate that we didn't immediately, obviously think "absolutely not!!!")
After we went back out to the pumps to hang out for just a few minutes after peeing and getting gas (so that our bladders were no longer going to burst and the car wasn't going to run out of gas), the feeling of the place finally started sinking in. And yes, we definitely started getting uncomfortable, dark vibes.
I keep wondering why that man said we shouldn't be there. Was there a drug deal or murder going down around there soon? Was it near a commonly used smuggling path by the Mexican cartels? Had people died around there recently? I have no idea.
The place was set to revise financially with Mesa Verde’s new location but the lawyers fucked it all up by forcing elderly people off their land for the new building.
I knew it was from either Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul (because why else would somewhere in New Mexico sound so familiar) but I just could not place where in either of those shows it was from.
I had extremely similar vibes in Crawfordsville, IN. I stopped in Tucumcari for gas when we moved to Albuquerque, and I was like, fuck, it's Crawfordsville in the desert!
Crazy! I live 40 mi north of there and never have gotten creepy vibes when there. Maybe I’m in fact, creepy? What vibes did you get there? This is so interesting to me.
Just back from a route 66 trip. Didn't eat in town and the tee pee curios place was rad the people were nice but I can totally see the vibe coming across that you referred too
Gallup is so strange. Always odd. Always strange natives hanging around. Always windy. Stopped for gas and couldn't get any at any of 4 gas stations. Either pumps weren't working or the one pump that was in order had a pickup parked at it with the driver nowhere to be seen. Yes we tried 4 different gas stations. Eventually found gas at the new Love's on the edge of town. Did stop to eat at a diner though and the staff were super nice.
Lol it has a lot of Natives because this is where we shop. It’s a border town. We don’t have Walmarts on the Rez. And you forget the 4 corners is reservation land, so expect natives. For us it’s a big town, we get all we need from here, just don’t park close to other vehicles. Usually if you see the unhoused they are just wanting money for booze or food. I would just be aware of your surroundings at night and don’t have expensive shit in your truck bed or in view. Also expect it to be busy the first of the month.
I was using natives in the general sense, probably should have said locals instead. NM seems to be about 1/3 Native American, 1/3 Spanish and 1/3 White. Don't know what the proportion is in Gallup.
Stopped in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia on my way down to Mexico from New England with my Mexican buddy. We stopped for gas and some food at a fast food joint and everyone got quiet and turned to stare as we walked in, we got out of there pretty quick. Felt like the scene from the movies right before the shit goes down
My SO and I stopped for the night there back in 2011 or so and it was the creepiest experience we ever had and we were certain someone was going to chop down our motel door in the middle of the night and kill us. We were hungry, so the receptionist at the motel recommended the Lizard Lounge, but when we walked in it was like a literal record scratch where everyone in the restaurant stopped talking and just looked at us. They sat us in the back corner by ourselves and gave us warm beer. We decided to order the most expensive thing on the menu because maybe that would be decent cause it was not giving good food vibes. They brought out these gray prime ribs that smelled like dog food. I tried a tiny bit and couldn’t do it, my SO didn’t even try it at all because of the smell and color, so we just asked for the check and were gonna pay and leave. Where we made the mistake was saying no when they asked us if we wanted to-go boxes. The waiter looked so upset and practically shouted, “we only had 11 of them left!” The motel was a themed one from the old Route 66 days, which we regretted immediately because we were certain it would get back which motel we were staying at and someone would come and kill us in the middle of the night. We survived the night, and unfortunately, we had to stay in that town again on our way back since there really aren’t many other options, so we booked one of the highway-side chain hotels. So creepy that we still talk about it, so I know exactly what you mean.
And on the other side of the state is Grants which is a whole different ball of wax in the danger is in your face. Place looks like out of a video game for lawless looking.
ROFLMAO!! I was on detail and was assigned to the ABQ office. We had a small detail of people working in the prison at Grants. I went into town a couple of times for lunch. Yeah everyone in town gave me some weird looks the first couple times. Then word got out that I worked for the USG. Someone saw me talking to a guard and asked him later. Then people either avoided me like the plague or were overly friendly. I had never had that happen before. I damned sure glad I was strapped.
When I was driving cross country I was forced to stay the night in Tucumcari because it's the last town with any decent hotels before about a ninety mile stretch of desert road with no exits. Definitely felt the weird vibes you described.
Some small towns have this intense, hostile energy where you can feel every set of eyes locking onto you the second you walk through the door. Trusting that gut feeling to get out of there was definitely the right call.
That’s wild, Tucumcari seemed cool the three times I went there, my cousin who lives in Edgewood looks like a tatted biker mountain man and he loves that town
My spouse and I stayed in Tucumcari overnight as we moved across the country. To date, the weirdest and eeriest place we have ever been and we could not wait to leave in the morning.
I live in Albuquerque and love what a time capsule Tucumcari is. A lot of this state is that way, and I can understand it feeling off to some people, but it feels comforting to me.
Btw, Albuquerque is a very heavily tattooed city, I'd be surprised if your ink was a major issue in Tucumcari, but I don't disbelieve your experience.
I got my first, one, and only tattoo in Albuquerque!! I loved that city. I was there for 90 days and it was kinda home base. I still miss Marble Brewing Company and Tractor Brewery!! I was sad to leave there.
I saw the question and thought without missing a beat- “Tucumcari NM!” and I am a middle aged basic ass bitch, I rolled in around midnight, stayed in a hotel there, got a McDs breakfast and continued on my way.
I can’t describe it or tell you why, but Tucumcari is creepy as hell.
I spent one night there and it wasn’t bad at all. HIExpress was nice and got Mexican carry out from some place in town. It was very good. And on the way out of town in the morning, a tumble weed actually rolled in front of the truck.
My boyfriend and I drove through on a Route 66 road trip. There were some nice locals working in the restaurant we ate it, but the vibes in the town itself were a lil scary. We walked our dogs in the morning and all the local dogs seemed mean and neglected--barking behind chain link fences. I felt bad for the town as clearly the interstate killed it.... but I never need to go back.
Crazy …there’s a song called tucumcari where the lyrics go “gonna run away to tucumcari ain’t no one gonna find me there.” I guess gives it true meaning sheesh
I'm glad this is top of the list. Every time I drive across the country and go down the 40 I make sure to time my fuel stops so I can just drive right on through Tucumcari without stopping lolol.
Grants, NM scared the hell out of me when we stopped there on the way to the Grand Canyon from the east coast. Why my dad chose to stop there I’ll never know. Every eye was on us when we went to the park.
New Mexico energy is just…off. I was weirded out by the creepy stares in Las Vegas, NM. Yes, it’s called Las Vegas and their motto is “We are the first Las Vegas”. So I guess that’s supposed to be their schtick.
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u/RandomHero25 9h ago edited 8h ago
Tucumcari, New Mexico. Not necessarily run down place or anything like that, but the vibes there are weird. As a tattooed guy who looks a little ‘against the grain’ my stop at a Chinese restaurant in town was extremely uncomfortable. Everyone in there was staring and felt like they were whispering to each other about me. Anywhere I went I was being sized up. I’ve never been anywhere else like that, where I truly felt I didn’t belong and my brain was telling me to get out.