Originally a railroad town, the village was renamed from Rock Island to Glenrio by the Rock Island and Pacific Railroad in 1908, and began receiving motorists on the dusty
Ozark Trail in 1917. Its original structures were adobe buildings. The
circa-1910 Angel House was in New Mexico. The Ozark Trail was formed into
U.S. Route 66 on November 11, 1926. By the 1930s,
U.S. Route 66 was a paved, two-lane road served locally by several
filling stations, a
restaurant, and a
motel. The road was widened in the 1950s. A
Texaco station (1950) and a
diner (Brownlee Diner/Little Juarez Café, 1952) were constructed in Texas using the
art moderne architectural style. The location of Glenrio on the Texas and New Mexico border led to some interesting business practices. At one point, all fuel was dispensed in Texas due to New Mexico's higher gasoline taxes. The 1930s State Line Bar and motel were built in New Mexico because Deaf Smith County, Texas, was
dry at the time. The railroad station was in Texas. The local post office, built around 1935, was in New Mexico. A water tank and windmill in New Mexico were constructed around 1945. The Joseph Brownlee House, constructed in
Amarillo in 1930, was moved to Glenrio in 1950. Glenrio was the site of the "First Motel in Texas" / "Last Motel in Texas" (Homer Ehresman's family-run 1953 State Line Café and Gas Station and 1955 Texas Longhorn Motel, closed in 1976) and other businesses that straddled the state line on U.S. Route 66 for many years until Interstate 40 bypassed the community in September 1973. For years, a simmering dispute had existed over of which state the east part of Glenrio is lawfully a part of. The straight north–south border between the two states was originally defined as the
103rd meridian, but the 1859 survey that was supposed to mark that boundary mistakenly set the border between too far west of that line, making the current towns of
Texline,
Farwell,
Bledsoe, Bronco and the eastern part of Glenrio appear to be within Texas. New Mexico's short border with Oklahoma, in contrast, was surveyed on the correct meridian. New Mexico's draft constitution in 1910 stated that the border is on the 103rd meridian as intended. The disputed strip, hundreds of miles long, includes parts of valuable
oilfields of the
Permian Basin. A bill was passed in the
New Mexico Senate to fund and file a lawsuit in the
U.S. Supreme Court to recover the strip from Texas, but the bill did not become law. Today, land in the strip is included in Texas land surveys and the land and towns (including the east part of Glenrio) for all purposes are taxed and governed by the State of Texas. ==Location==