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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.
    I N THE P ANHANDLE, 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 Lone 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
    F ROM 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