by Jim Hinckley
Realigning Route 66 and bypassing Bridgeport called for the construction of a bridge consisting of thirty-eight Warren pony trusses to span the South Canadian River.
Engineering Time Capsule
The section of Route 66 between Hinton Junction and Weatherford is a perfect time capsule of Route 66 circa the mid-1930s. The concrete roadway is curbed here to divert rainwater that rolls across the hills, an antiquated highway engineering practice with few surviving remnants.
The thirty-eight span, 3,994-foot “pony” bridge across the South Canadian River that replaced the one at Bridgeport was a federal aid project that opened in 1934. At 3,944 feet, this was and is the longest bridge on Route 66 in Oklahoma.
Lucille Hamon’s gas station and motel, just west of Hydro, is one of the most photographed sites on Route 66. Dating to 1941, the structure has changed little, and plans are in the works to refurbish the building in the near future.
Established in 1927, the property known today as Lucille’s was operated by Lucille Hamon from 1941 to 2000. It is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the original Hamon’s Court sign is displayed at the Smithsonian Institute.
FOSS
THE FIRST MANIFESTATION OF Foss—named after J. M. Foss, former postmaster in Cordell, Oklahoma, on Turkey Creek north of the present site—vanished with the flood of May 2, 1902. Relocating to higher ground, the residents rebuilt the town at the heart of a vast area of rich farmlands.
By 1912, Foss was a prosperous and substantial community of stone buildings with a business district that included two banks, cotton gins, several general merchandise stores, a newspaper, a wagon works, a machine shop, drugstores, a bakery, a broom factory, and an opera house. At its peak, the population purportedly neared one thousand residents.
Near Foss, Route 66 runs straight as an arrow to the horizon through a pastoral landscape unchanged in appearance since the town was a vital, thriving farming community.
In 1900, the Foss cotton gin was one of the busiest enterprises in the area and an important component of the town economy. Research Division of the Oklahoma Historical Society
At exit 53 on Interstate 40, turn north on State Highway 44.
A ghost sign on a weathered wall provides the faintest of hints as to what purpose an overgrown building once served in Foss.
The development of nearby Clinton and Elk City as rail and supply centers was the first blow to the town’s economic stability. The population plummeted to 348 in 1920. Providing services to motorists on Route 66 partially stemmed the decline, but this was a short-lived reprieve, as collapsing agricultural prices and the drought that fueled the Dust Bowl spurred a second exodus.
For a brief moment in the early 1950s, with the establishment of an Air Force facility at nearby Burns Flat, it appeared Foss might experience a renaissance. But the closure of the base and the bypass of Route 66 by Interstate 40 sent the old town into a downward spiral. In 1977, the last bank closed for good.
Those who still reside in Foss adamantly deny the community is a ghost town. However, history, the ruins nestled in the brush, and broken sidewalks give credence to the descriptor. There are a few picturesque surviving structures of particular note, including a service station at the junction in a small grove of trees.
The old city meat market in Erick has found new life with the resurgent interest in Route 66 and is now the Sand Hills Curiosity Shop, owned by Harley and Annabelle Russell, better known as the Mediocre Music Makers.
SMALL TOWNS, BIG HISTORY
GHOSTS that serve as tangible links to a time when this storied highway truly was the Main Street of America line Route 66 from Quapaw to Texola. Not as evident, however, is the rich history that was made along this route. Lead and zinc in copious amounts may have been the most profitable exports from the Commerce area, but they were not the town’s most famous contribution. That would be a baseball player with extraordinary talents by the name of Mickey Mantle.
Miami is home to the lovingly restored 1929 Coleman Theatre. The steel truss bridge spanning the Neosho River just west of town since 1937 was the last link in the paving of U.S. 66 in Oklahoma.
Vinita is the namesake of Vinne Ream, the sculptor who created the life-sized statue of the sixteenth president, Abraham Lincoln, that stands in the U.S. Capital building. This was also the first town in Oklahoma with electrical service.
Foyil was the hometown of Andy Payne, winner of the 1928 Bunion Derby, a transcontinental foot race from Los Angeles to New York that followed the entire length of Route 66.
Diminutive Kellyville was the site of the worst railroad disaster in Oklahoma history, a distinction earned when two trains collided west of town in 1917.
The town of Erick produced two legends of the American music scene: Roger Miller and Sheb Wooley. It is also the site of the 100th Meridian Museum, housed in an ornate bank building built long before the commissioning of U.S. 66.
Along Route 66 in Oklahoma, no town is too small to have a rich and colorful history. For the traveler, this means endless opportunities for discovery abound.
TEXOLA
Stand quietly on the Texola pump island in a sea of grass, and on the breeze you can hear the clicking of the pump as it counts the gallons.
TEXOLA, AS WITH GLENRIO ON THE WEST END of the Panhandle, suffers from a conflicted identity. Straddling the Texas/Oklahoma border, the tiny hamlet, founded in 1901, has been surveyed eight different times and, dependant on the survey, alternatively listed as being in Texas or Oklahoma. It is currently listed as an Oklahoma community one half mile east of the border.
The confliction of identity is also apparent in the various names it has had. At various times, maps show it as Texokla, Texoma, and Texola.
The bright, colorful murals of Water Hole #2 in Texola seem out of place among the overgrown parking lots and weathered façades.
Texola, accessed via exit 5 or exit 1, is south of Interstate 40.
Change comes slow to the Western plains, and as late as the 1940s, the little village gave the appearance of being locked in a preterritorial time warp. Jack Rittenhouse notes this in his route guide: “gas, cafes; no courts; limited facilities. This sun baked small town has an old section of stores which truly savor of pioneer days. Notice them to your right on the town’s one main cross street. They have sidewalk awnings of wood and metal, supported by posts.”
Originally the lands here were ceded to the Choctaw tribe by treaty, but an 1896 Supreme Court ruling designated them a part of the territory of Oklahoma. Settlement in the area began in earnest in the 1880s. Establishment of the railroad at the turn of the century provided the accoutrements of civilization necessary for the establishment of towns on these plains.
Texola today is almost a pure ghost town, with a population counted in the single digits. This has kept the vandalism to a minimum, but the ravages of time are taking their toll, as evidenced by the shell of the WPA-era school nestled among the trees along Route 66.
Still, there is a wide array of remnants from better days, many of which bridge the gap between the days of the Western frontier and the glory days of Route 66. Counted among the former is the tiny stone territorial jail a few blocks north of Route 66 on the last street at the east end of town.
A humorous touch in empty Texola is the sign on the old roadhouse that says it all: “No Place Like Texola.”
Sepia tones add an eerie, haunting quality to scenes of empty homes and shuttered businesses amid the prairie grass in Texola.
TEXAS
In Glenrio, only prairie critters find respite from the summer sun or the winter wind at an old motel that was once a restful haven for the road-weary.
With the patience that carved the Grand Canyon over eons, nature reclaims Glenrio, where the clock stopped with the bypass of Route 66.
IN THE PANHANDLE, the ghost towns of Route 66 are few, but the ghostly remnants of those towns that have faded to mere shadows are many.
Most towns in the Lo
ne Star State along the old double six share the common foundational element of agriculture, but each followed a different path in its rise. For some, it was oil; for others, it was the railroad. In others, it was cattle and water-melons. In one, it was all of the above plus women’s undergarments.
Ultimately, each weathered the hard times of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, World War II, and dying oil fields with a flow of traffic that ebbed and flowed as a tide on Route 66. In spite of their diversity, the decline of each also has a common denominator: the replacement of Route 66 with a four-lane superhighway that allowed motorists to zip past rather than wander through.
TO AMARILLO
FROM THE GHOSTLY STREETS of Texola near the Oklahoma border to the modern metropolis on the high plains that is Amarillo, Route 66 travelers are seldom out of sight of the modern era manifested in the four lanes of Interstate 40. Perhaps this element is what gives the ghost towns and the empty places along this section of Route 66 such a surreal feeling.
With a population hovering just under two thousand souls, Shamrock stretches the idea of ghost town a bit. However, when viewed in the context of the boomtown of nearly four thousand residents in 1930 that spawned the businesses and service stations that are now stark, skeletal ruins under a prairie sky, the term becomes an appropriate descriptor.
The town derives its name from the post office application submitted by Irish immigrant George Nickel in 1890. Interestingly, the post office never opened, since Nickel’s home/post office burned that same year.
Therefore, the official beginning for the town is pegged to the year 1902, with the arrival of the Chicago, Rock Island & Gulf Railway and the selling of town lots that summer. When Frank Exum submitted an application for a post office, he wanted to name the town for himself, but the railroad designated the stop Shamrock in deference to the original post office application.
By 1911, Shamrock was an incorporated community with a promising future, two banks, the Wheeler County Texan newspaper, numerous businesses, and the Cotton Oil Mill. Amazingly, the prosperous little town depended on hauled water until completion of a water line from the J. M. Porter Ranch in 1923.
This lovingly restored Magnolia station in Shamrock seems to have been lifted from the pages of history and transported into the modern era. Jim Hinckley
With the discovery of oil in the area in 1926 and the designation of Route 66 in the same year, Shamrock became a modern, bustling community. Jack Rittenhouse notes that, in 1946, the town hosted a hotel, numerous auto courts, garages, and a wide array of cafés.
AAA accommodations directories from the 1940s list three recommended motels and auto courts: the Sun ’n Sand Motel, the Village Motel, and Cross Roads Court. Surprisingly, these directories do not list recommended service facilities.
The decline of the oil industry and the completion of Interstate 40, which allowed travelers to bypass Shamrock, have resulted in a slow downward spiral. The population decreased from 3,113 in 1960 to 1,828 in 2006. Still, this little town takes great pride in its association with legendary Route 66, as evidenced by the restoration of the iconic U-Drop Inn, an art deco masterpiece built in 1936, and the restored Magnolia gas station downtown.
Lela, six miles west of Shamrock, was never much more than a wide spot in the road. Its peak population was 135 in 1980, although the town had shown great promise in 1902 as a station on the Chicago, Rock Island & Gulf Railway.
Shamrock’s U-Drop Inn, built in 1936, has become a Route 66 icon, as evidenced by its inclusion in the imaginary town Radiator Springs in the animated film Cars. Joe Sonderman collection
From Texola, continue west on old U.S. 66, a later four-lane alignment that becomes the south Interstate 40 frontage road. At exit 146 on Interstate 40, cross the interstate and turn left on the north frontage road. Inquire in McLean about earlier alignments south of Interstate 40. To continue with the later portions of Route 66, follow Highway 273 south from McLean one mile, then turn right on County Road BB and continue to the junction with Highway 291. From Alanreed to Amarillo, Route 66 serves as the frontage road for Interstate 40.
Shamrock supplanted Lela as a trade center, and were it not for Route 66, the tiny town might have vanished from the map entirely. In 1946, Rittenhouse notes it was a “small settlement consisting of five gas stations, a café, and a post office.”
McLean, fifteen miles west of Lela and the last Route 66 town bypassed in Texas, is another town that stretches the definition of the term ghost town, with a population numbered at 782 in 2006, almost half of the peak reached in 1950. Yet classic elements that fit the ghost town definition abound, including nearly empty main streets shadowed by a long-shuttered theater, a hotel, and stores.
DON’T MISS
The U-Drop Inn in Shamrock is a definite “must see.” If your schedule allows, plan your visit so that you can experience it both during the day and at night, when its restored neon sign bathes it in soft, colorful light.
The Devil’s Rope/Old Route 66 Museum in McLean, housed in a former factory for women’s undergarments, is just one of the many surprises to be found in this faded little town. In addition to the world’s largest collection of barbed wire (much more fascinating than most people would think), the museum houses an incredible cornucopia of memorabilia that chronicles early ranching as well as the rise of Route 66 in the Panhandle.
In Groom, the attraction is the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the largest cross in the Western Hemisphere. This is also enhanced with viewing at night.
The town’s story begins with Alfred Rowe, master of RO Ranch’s two hundred thousand acres and a multifaceted entrepreneur with a diverse background that included a Peruvian birth and an English education. Rowe believed in learning to run a business from the ground up, which meant that his introduction to Texas ranching came as a lowly cowboy employed by Charles Goodnight.
He was also a master at sensing opportunity, and that was what he saw in a well, a switchyard, and a section house built in 1901 by the Choctaw, Oklahoma & Texas Railroad Company (later the Rock Island Railroad). Rowe had the foresight to donate adjoining properties for a cattle-loading facility.
On December 3, 1902, a plat for the town of McLean—named for William Pinkney McLean, a hero of the war for Texas independence and the state’s first railroad commissioner—was recorded in the Gray County Courthouse. Within two years, the town was a thriving hub of commerce with three general stores, livery stables, a bank, and even a newspaper.
During the early 1920s, the discovery of oil in the area and burgeoning Route 66 traffic kicked growth into high gear. By 1940, there were six churches, a population of more than 1,500, and more than fifty businesses. McLean was also an economically diverse community with petroleum, agriculture, and Route 66–oriented businesses, as well as a factory (now the Devil’s Rope/Old Route 66 Museum) that produced ladies’ undergarments.
How many years has it been since the road-weary trucker stopped for coffee, pie, and a friendly smile at the café in Alanreed?
During World War II, the economy received an additional boost from a military facility constructed north of town. The history of this facility, utilized as a POW camp for German mariners, is preserved at the Devil’s Rope/Old Route 66 Museum.
Several factors sent McLean into the slow-motion downward spiral experienced by so many Route 66 communities: drought, the emergence of Pampa as the county’s industrial center, the collapse of the oil industry, and, of course, the bypass of Route 66. Today, the resurgent interest in Route 66 has stemmed the decline and has served as a catalyst for the resurrection of McLean’s remaining roadside relics, including the recently refurbished Phillips 66 station that dates to 1930 and the Cactus Inn Motel.
Less than a dozen miles to the west lies the old town of Alanreed, another victim of changing times. As of 2001, the population hovered at fifty residents.
The town site in the basin of McClellan Creek six miles north of present-day Alanreed, selected in 1881, was centrall
y located on the busy stage and freight road that connected Mobeetie to Clarendon. Oddly enough, it would be three years before the Clarendon Land & Cattle Company began selling lots.
When surveys in 1900 made it apparent that the Choctaw, Oklahoma, & Texas Railroad would miss the little community, the platting of a new community commenced. The following year, the school opened, and the year after this, the post office transferred to the new location.
By 1904, Alanreed was the largest community in Gray County, and by the mid-teens, all indications were that this town was a rising star. The community had a bank, a hotel, a depot, churches, saloons, grocery and hardware stores, and a livery stable and blacksmith shop.
In the early 1920s, oil replaced water-melons as the area’s primary export, and for a brief moment, there was a booming surge that pushed the population to an estimated five hundred in 1927. As with most towns along Route 66 in the eastern half of the Texas Panhandle, the downward slide of Alanreed was a slow one.
In 1947, the population had slipped to three hundred people, and there were eleven businesses, mostly service related, along Route 66. Thirty years later, there were an estimated sixty residents and no operating businesses.
Maintained by the Texas Historic Route 66 Association, the restored Bradley Kiser 66 Super Service Station, circa 1930, is the crown jewel of Alanreed.
