Chapter 25 — Tucumcari Tonight and the Billboard That Stayed

At its peak in the 1960s, the stretch of Interstate 40 approaching Tucumcari, New Mexico from the east was lined with billboards reading Tucumcari Tonight — 2,000 motel rooms — for a hundred miles in either direction. The campaign was organized by the Tucumcari-Quay County Chamber of Commerce as a way of capturing travelers who needed to stop somewhere before pushing on to Albuquerque.

It worked. Tucumcari, which had grown up as a cattle shipping town and then a Route 66 stop, had a motel business that outpunched the town’s population considerably. Travelers who’d been told 2,000 times that Tucumcari had 2,000 motel rooms stopped in Tucumcari.

The motel count has declined since then. Some of the great mid-century properties have closed or fallen into disrepair. But the billboards are still there — faded, fewer, but legible — and the slogan is still on bumper stickers and refrigerator magnets sold in the souvenir shops along the old Route 66 alignment through downtown.

What the Tucumcari billboard campaign understood before most marketers did is that frequency is its own form of persuasion. You don’t have to convince people your town is the best. You just have to make it the name they see most often on the longest, most tired stretch of their drive.

The New Mexico desert is genuinely beautiful, especially in the late afternoon light. Tucumcari, in that light, looks like a painting of itself — the old motels and the newer ones and the Tee Pee Curios shop with its enormous sign. Worth stopping for. The billboard has been saying so for sixty years.

We are offering licences for ROUTE 66® Beer in specific territories. An invitation to others to become part of this story. To carry a piece of the road with them and to contribute to the story. We will share a percentage of royalties with Route 66 associations to keep the story alive.

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The journey continues. This story is brought to you by ROUTE 66® BEER. Find us at ROUTE66BEER.COM