Newkirk, New Mexico: A Railroad Town Named for Oklahoma

Newkirk was founded in nineteen oh one when the railroad pushed through Guadalupe County and needed a name for its new siding. The name came not from the landscape but from a local resident who had moved here from Newkirk, Oklahoma. The town grew slowly, where Route sixty-six brought motorists through and, by a nineteen forty-six guidebook, supported a trading post, four gas stations, two diners, and cabin courts, for one hundred fifteen residents.

Then Interstate forty cut a new path south of Newkirk and the town began to empty. By two thousand twenty the census counted eight residents. A handful of crumbling adobe walls and the ghost of a commercial strip are what remain.

Newkirk is one of dozens of small communities along the old two-lane that learned the hard lesson of what happens when the road moves.