Ghost Towns of Route 66 by Jim Hinckley Read Free Book Online Page B

This section, known as the Jericho Gap, was infamous for mud, ruts, and enterprising farmers ready to rescue motorists for a few dollars. The Texas Department of Transportation began work to close the gap with a paved bypass in 1928, and the project was completed in 1931.
    Groom, forty-two miles east of Amarillo, appears to be another ghost along Route 66, with its empty auto courts and service stations, but in actuality the town has maintained a rather steady population: 800 in 1972 and 587 in 2000. Conway has a similar appearance, but its population has dropped from a high of 175 in 1969 to less than 20 today.
    Alfred Rowe
    ALFRED ROWE, founder of McLean and master of the RO Ranch, lived a life of amazingly diverse adventures. Born in Lima, Peru, and educated in England, he immigrated to the United States in 1878 after years spent in worldwide exploration.
    Even though his secondary education centered on agricultural studies, Rowe chose to learn the art of American ranching in the Texas Panhandle from the ground up. A year after literally learning the ropes from legendary pioneer rancher Charles Goodnight, Rowe began purchasing trail herds, as well as complete outfits. He started his own ranch using an abandoned dugout as headquarters and drove his herds to Dodge City in Kansas.
    By 1895, the RO Ranch encompassed more than two hundred thousand acres of owned and leased lands, and Rowe was one of the most successful ranchers on the Panhandle plains. This success fueled other endeavors on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and soon he was traveling, often with his family, to England at least twice a year.
    With the establishment of rail lines to the north and south of the ranch, Rowe diversified his business enterprises and began selling small farms. Tying this and his ranching together was his donation of land, in 1902, for a cattle-loading facility on the Rock Island Railroad and the platting of an accompanying town site.
    Rowe’s star was still rising when, in 1912 on a return trip from England, he tragically became a victim of the sinking of the H.M.S.
Titanic.

    The winds play a haunting melody in Jericho as they whisper through glassless windows and swirl dust on floors.

    Amid the ruins of Jericho, the rusty bones of what was once the pride of Detroit provide a link to the modern era.
    T HE S TAKED P LAINS
    I N HIS SEMINAL WORK published in 1946,
A Guide Book to Highway 66
, author Jack Rittenhouse says about the road west of Amarillo: “Now you are on the ‘STAKED PLAINS,’ or ‘Llano Estacdo’ as the Spaniards called it. The origin of the name is disputed, but it is generally taken to be derived from the legend that early pioneers drove stakes along their trails for lack of natural landmarks to guide them.”
    Vestiges of the Route 66 glory days and the frontier era in which they were founded pepper the communities in the western half of the Panhandle, but few qualify as ghost towns. The exceptions are Boise (less than a site on an early alignment of the highway that is on private property), Wildorado, and Glenrio.
    Depending on the date of the map you consult, Glenrio may be shown in New Mexico or Texas, but it is actually in the latter astride the border in northwestern Deaf Smith County. At least most of the town is in Texas; Jack Rittenhouse notes that, in 1946, the depot was on the west side of the state line, and the business district was on the east.
    Some twenty years before the road through town was marked with a shield emblazoned with two sixes, Glenrio was a farming town on the Chicago, Rock Island & Gulf Railway. The depot and railyard were beehives of activity. Cattle and produce were loaded on outbound shipments, while freight and dry goods for the area’s farms and ranches came inbound.

    A vintage Jeep out to pasture seems an apt monument to the landscape of the Staked Plains that embraces the ghostly remnants of Glenrio.
    Glenrio is accessed from exit 0 on Interstate