Johnpaul and I drove through Seboyeta on the way to Moquino. It is near Laguna Pueblo, off I-40 west of Albuquerque. I suspect we may have missed some of the highlights of the town because all we saw were two abandoned stone houses, the remains of a tricycle and a band of friendly ranch horses.
     Seboyeta, New Mexico is a census designated place in Cibola County. That means it has a name and a dot on the map because people still live there but it no longer has a post office or a town government.
     In 2010, census data reported a population of 179 and Seboyeta had a post office from February 5, 1885 to January 7, 1995.

     My first visit to Moquino was in 2008 and from that trip there is only one surviving image which I published in a previous post about a nearby small town called Cubero. A few years later I shot an album cover for a local musician at the churches in Moquino so that was probably 2010 and I hadn't been back since, until a couple weeks ago. 
     It took Johnpaul and I two trips to find the churches in Moquino, mostly because I couldn't remember the name of the town and I thought they were in Cubero (they're not).
     Moquino, New Mexico is almost, but not quite, a ghost town. According to census data from 2010, Moquino has 37 residents and all of them live within easy viewing distance of the churches. They are very protective of these churches so don't go there looking for trouble or you'll find it. 

     Travelers on Route 66 looking for a place to get lunch between Albuquerque and Gallup would likely find themselves in Grants, New Mexico. Grants is the county seat of Cibola County and has a population of about 9000 people.
     To drive through Grants is to see a city in decline. Many Route 66 era businesses now sit abandoned. With the decline of mining and railroad industries, the most successful businesses in Grants now seem to be the WalMart Supercenter, McDonald's, and the gas stations and hotels near the freeway.

     It's funny how things turn out.     

     Budville, New Mexico was the site of a notorious double murder that remains unsolved to this day and the Budville Trading Co. was the scene of the crime. 
     The town of Budville is named after Howard Neal "Bud" Rice. In 1928 he and his wife, Flossie, opened the general store (Budville Trading Post). Together they also operated a gas station, garage, grocery store, post office and wrecker service. While this might seem like enough for a normal person, it wasn't enough for Bud so, in additional to all that, he also sold bus tickets, owned the local State Motor Vehicle Concession and got himself elected Justice Of The Peace. As such, Bud proclaimed himself the "Law West of the Rio Puerco" and did not hesitate to push his weight around whenever it suited him to do so.

     Located just west of the General Mills factory on Alameda, the smell of Chex Mix fills the air as you wade through a sea of tumbleweeds at the San Carlos Cemetery in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
     This cemetery has grave stones with birthdays going back to the mid 1800's. There are also an alarming number of children's graves, many only days old, from the 1940's.