Closed Route 66 Landmark with Jangling Keys
721 W Santa Fe Ave, Grants, NM 87020
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
No admission; drive-by only. Restaurant is permanently closed.
Access
Limited Access
Paved street
Equipment
Photos OK
Escolástico Mazon opened the Montecarlo Cafe in the early 1950s, timing the launch to coincide with one of the most intense economic booms Grants would ever see. Uranium ore had been discovered in the area, and the resulting influx of miners, geologists, and service workers turned Grants into a boomtown. The Montecarlo became part of that landscape — a reliable stop on the Route 66 corridor at 721 W Santa Fe Avenue.
The upstairs portion of the building originally housed apartments. At some point in the early 1990s, a fire gutted these spaces. The reconstruction converted them from residential use into a banquet room, preserving the building's commercial function while eliminating the residential history above.
Granted the closure has not been precisely dated in available sources, photographs from 2019 document the building operating as a photography studio — well past the end of its restaurant years. The building remains standing on the Route 66 corridor, its commercial use changed but its physical structure intact.
Sources
The paranormal character of the Montecarlo is dominated by a single, recurring acoustic phenomenon: the sound of a key ring, full of keys, being shaken. The accounts are specific in one detail — the keys are shaken close to people's ears, a deliberately proximate gesture rather than a background noise.
This kind of sound-based apparition, with no accompanying visual component, tends to accumulate in spaces with layered occupancy histories. The upstairs space was residential before the fire, then rebuilt as a commercial banquet room. Whether the phantom jangling preceded the fire or emerged afterward is not established in available sources.
Cold spots scattered throughout the upstairs space and ceiling fan lights activating independently complete the reported cluster. The combination — sound, cold, erratic lighting — follows a recognizable pattern in low-intensity poltergeist accounts, though no investigation record for this location was located.
The restaurant has been closed for years, eliminating the opportunity for first-hand visitor accounts to continue accumulating.
The former Montecarlo Cafe building at 721 W Santa Fe Ave in Grants can be viewed from the road. The restaurant closed years ago and was operating as a photography studio as of 2019. The upstairs banquet space, converted from apartments destroyed in an early 1990s fire, was the site of the key-jingling accounts.
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