Route 66 in Texas
Here we are, September 24, 2021, on Route 66 in Texas. Our first stop is Shamrock, Texas, probably most famous for its beautiful art deco style Conoco Tower Station and U Drop Inn Cafe.
We also found a few nice murals in Shamrock.
Next town is McLean, Texas. From the east, you get greeted with this lovely mural… You can read more about the McLean Commercial Historic District on the National Park Service website.
McLean is a pretty sad looking town now, but there are some nice murals…
The Phillips 66 Gas Station in McLean Texas was one of the first gas stations in Texas. From the NPS site: “In 1929, Phillips Petroleum chose McLean as the location for its first Texas station. The building’s quaint Tudor Revival design complete with shutters and an exterior brick chimney reflected the trend of building gas stations that looked like cottages. The station operated for five decades before closing in 1977.”
We overnighted in our little motorhome at Cactus Inn on the west side of town, and then the open road on Interstate 40. Route 66 is no longer a continuous road.
One needs a guidebook to know what to see and when to get off the interstate. We hopped off to see this old gas station in Alanreed. The historical marker says “Built by Bradley Kiser – 1930 – then in downtown Alanreed”
Along the road you see old and new. At left are old grain silos, at the right is some very new stuff along with a local landmark, the “leaning tower of Britten“, which has made it to Wikipedia…
We’d been to Cadillac Ranch, and now it was time for Slug Bug Ranch, near Conway, Texas. In case you don’t know, like Cadillac Ranch, you bring (or find) a spray can and paint whatever you want wherever you want.
At this point we just drive I-40 through Amarillo. Whatever Route 66 remnants are in Amarillo, we did not see… The next town we stop at is Vega, which may be the halfway point between Lake Michigan and the Pacific Ocean. The other thing I discovered is there was something called the Ozark Trail before Route 66. Both of them were not at least initially big construction projects, but rather making known the best routes for travelers.
On the map in the Texas panhandle, we arrive next at Vega. The Ozark Trail in this area goes on to Tucumcari and Santa Rosa, exactly the Route 66 route.
So here we are in Vega, Texas. I shot this old motel through the motorhome window, not knowing it is a famous motel… This is Vega Motel, featured on the National Park Service website. The hotel was constructed in 1947, to quote the NPS: “at the dawn of an era of unparalleled prosperity in the United States and Texas, a time when leisure and travel became a booming industry.” The Vega Motel was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2006. The design of the motel was common for its time in that you had a place to park your car under cover next to your motel room. And we have a nice mural on Boxwell Brothers Funeral Home.
Our next stop is the Vega Magnolia Gas Station, built in 1924, the second service station in Vega. This is from one of the displays in the station: “The station was built along the Ozark Trail, the dirt road that connected Vega with Amarillo and Adrian. … When Route 66 was commissioned in 1926, the station stood ready to serve the first travelers on this historic highway.”
