While teaching "PsychoGeographies" (a field-based, experiential art practices class) one summer at the University of New Mexico, I took my students on a tour of the Route 66 Motels in Albuqueruque. The students were fascinated, horrified, entranced and intensely curious as we examined ruins, partial ruins, soon-to-ne ruins, and fully operating establishments. They photogrphed, sketched, spoke to the owners and staff, examined the decaying histories first hand... Within a few days of our visit, The Aztec Motel, a hub of community and connection in the area since 1932, and reknowned for its lovingly eclectic exterior decor -- including recycled bottles, broken pottery, old coins, plastic flowers, regional figurines -- had been flattened to the ground. My students, although they didn't know it at the time, were some of the last peope to visit it, and realized it as a poignant testament to the loss of both physical and cultural history that is occuring so rapidly along Route 66.

-Robin Ward