The Neon Signs of Albuquerque’s Route 66

On August 19, 2017, in New Mexico, by admin
Albuquerque's Neon Signs of Route 66

The Neon Signs of Albuquerque’s Route 66 (click to enlarge)

One of the goals of my Albuquerque trip was to find neon signs from the vintage Route 66 motels.  I did some research on GoogleEarth to see where people had posted their pictures of these signs.

I arrived in Albuquerque in the early afternoon and drove to the Westward Ho Motel.   I then drove from west to east along Route 66 (aka Central Avenue).  I had a general idea where some of the neon signs were and stumbled across others.  I pulled a u-turn after capturing an image of the Premier Motel and drove east to west to capture signs on the other side of the street.

I originally thought I would drive the strip at night and capture all of the signs lit up.  Unfortunately, only the El Vado was lit up, and very brightly at that!

Once I returned home I cut out each sign from their background and pasted them all into a new file.  For the background I used the stucco wall from an image of a building in Sante Fe.  The Albuquerque lettering comes from a sticker on the hood of a car hanging on the wall of a building outside the 66 Diner (see this post for the original sticker).  I had taken several images of that hood, one from straight on thinking I might be able to use the lettering on the sticker.  I used the Perspective Crop Tool in Photoshop to straighten the text.  Cutting out the text and pasting it in the master file completed all of the elements I needed for the poster.

Westward Ho Motel: N35 04 39.99 W106 43 08.61

Premiere Motel: N46 04 45.66 W106 36 04.57

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