By Rick Holben
East Mountain Historical Society
Chances are slim to none that anyone alive today has memories of La Pluma Service Station, Cafe and Trading Post, as it existed for just a brief time along two-lane U.S. Highway 66 east of Tijeras. A recently discovered photograph taken by an unknown family traveling the highway in 1939 documents the station during its period of operation.
The owner of this ephemeral roadside stop was a Native American woman, Pluma Belless. Born Pluma Davis in Colorado in 1898, her early years were spent in Oklahoma Indian Territory on the Muskogee Creek Nation. A 1910 census lists her as an 11-year-old living as a boarder with several seemingly unrelated people (but perhaps extended family members), who ran a restaurant in Nowata, Oklahoma. In 1915, she married Earl Belless, a 22-year-old lead miner from Joplin, Missouri. In 1920, they lived together in Joplin with a son, Earl Jr., but by 1930 Pluma and two children apparently moved in with her father, John Davis, in Hogan, Oklahoma. Strangely, records show that Pluma and Earl remarried in Carthage, Missouri, in 1933, but less than a year later, Pluma was granted a divorce and they went their separate ways.
Fast forward four years and Pluma purchased six acres from Jose and Macedonia Gonzales along the recently established U.S. Highway 66 east of Tijeras in the area approaching Sedillo Hill. In July 1938, Pluma contracted with Jesus Griego for the construction of a building on this land at a cost of $125. We can assume the station was operational by late 1938. However, by May 1939, classified ads appeared in the Albuquerque Journal advertising La Pluma Conoco Station and Store for sale.
The 1940 census puts Pluma Belless and her younger son, Jack, living in Denver, Colorado, managing an apartment building. A delinquent property tax notice was mailed to Pluma Belless, c/o Pluma Trading Store, in December 1941, which was returned to county offices with the notation “moved left no address.” With this, we can assume the Pluma Service Station likely existed for fewer than three years. The building was sold in 1942 at a county tax sale to A.H. Grissell of Clovis, N.M. It is unknown what the building was used for until then, but by 1949, T.E. Grissell advertised it as a rental home known as “La Pluma.”
In the early 1950s, Reno and Mary Paques acquired the property, and with additions made to the old station, it became their home, which still stands today. The Paques ran the well-known Reno & Mary’s Bar on U.S. Highway 66, just west of what is now the I-40 Zuzax exit, until the late 1960s.
Pluma Belless died in Texas in 1974 and was buried next to her father, John Davis, in Pryor, Oklahoma.