Continental Divide

About

Crossing the Continental Divide is one of Route 66's quieter but more significant milestones. Here in the high country of western New Mexico, the Mother Road reaches approximately 7,263 feet—the highest elevation anywhere along historic Route 66—and passes from one great continental drainage basin into another. Water falling to the west ultimately drains toward the Pacific Ocean, while drainage east of the divide works toward the Rio Grande system and the Gulf of Mexico. Long before automobile travelers arrived, this natural passage through the uplands shaped movement across the region. By 1914 a state highway and the National Old Trails Road followed the corridor; Route 66 incorporated it in 1926. As motorists climb westward from Milan and Grants, irrigated country gradually gives way to pinyon-juniper terrain, Navajo homesteads, trading posts and the red sandstone landscapes characteristic of western New Mexico.

The tiny community that took the name Continental Divide grew around this transportation corridor at Campbell Pass and today remains alongside Interstate 40, Historic Route 66 and NM-122. For Route 66 travelers, the attraction is less a single monument than the experience of reaching the crest itself: roadside Continental Divide signs, sweeping high-desert views and reminders of the trading-post culture that served generations of motorists. One surviving part of that tradition is Ortega's Indian Market on Old Historic Route 66, where the state tourism office notes that the Great Divide passes through the property. Beyond the novelty of standing astride two drainage basins, the stop marks a genuine change in the landscape—the beginning of Route 66's descent toward Gallup, Arizona and eventually the Pacific.

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