Lightning strike closes Santa Rosa restaurant for weeks

Route 66 Restaurant, Santa Rosa

The historic Route 66 Restaurant in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, will be closed for weeks after a lightning strike destroyed the building’s electrical system, according to this week’s print edition of the Guadalupe County Communicator, based in Santa Rosa.

The strike Wednesday afternoon knocked out a fuse box and scorched a wall of the restaurant, once known as The Shawford. The newspaper reported:

The incident happened as the restaurant was serving a late afternoon lunch crowd and a brief but powerful thunderstorm began rolling through the city. Suddenly, lightning struck, and from inside the restaurant, “We just heard something pop,” Velasquez said.
Power to the building was cut off, and the smell of smoke began seeping into the back kitchen area. After calling 911, Velasquez and cook Christine Villanueva ran to the back, saw the source of the smoke and began tearing through sheetrock to extinguish a fire in the wall.

Firefighters extinguished the fire, but the restaurant must undertake the costly task of replacing its entire electrical system, which will take weeks and will have to occur during the peak of tourism season, owner Patricia Velasquez said.

The Route 66 Restaurant also closed for a time in 2013 after a severe hailstorm ravaged the city and undertook renovations the next year.

In addition to The ShawFord Restaurant, some Internet sleuthing determined the restaurant also was named the Shawford Cafe and Lettie’s Restaurant. The earliest Santa Rosa newspaper reference I could find to Lettie’s was 1964.

(Image of the Route 66 Restaurant in 2009 by Jasperdo via Flickr)

3 thoughts on “Lightning strike closes Santa Rosa restaurant for weeks

  1. I was curious if the Route 66 Restaurant here and the Kix on 66 in Tucumcari were once both Denny’s or similar chain coffee shop places to eat. When you’re from the Midwest wan suddenly, for the first time, you see places like these they standout. We didn’t have Denny’s back then in the old days (before the 70s).

    Sad that this place is going under. We stopped and had some good food there over the years. The service was also good.

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