Route 66 Stops in Texas: Shamrock to Glenrio, Map and Miles (2026)

Route 66 crosses the Texas Panhandle for about 186 miles, from the Oklahoma line west of Texola to the ghost town of Glenrio on the New Mexico border. The stops that matter, east to west: the U-Drop Inn in Shamrock, the first Phillips station in Texas and the barbed wire museum in McLean, the leaning water tower and the giant cross in Groom, Amarillo's Sixth Avenue, the Big Texan and Cadillac Ranch, the 1924 Magnolia station in Vega, the Midpoint Cafe in Adrian at mile 1,139, and Glenrio. One full day covers it, with Amarillo as the natural place to sleep.

I'm Helena. I drove the whole road from Chicago to Santa Monica in April 2026 for the Centennial Edition of my Route 66 Field Manual, and Texas is the state people tend to rush. It is short, it is flat, and outside the towns the old road mostly runs as the frontage road of I-40. That is exactly why it is worth a plan: the good stops are small, close together and easy to miss at 75 miles an hour.

How many miles of Route 66 are in Texas?

I use about 186 miles for Texas, the same figure as in my Route 66 map with cities and my road trip planner. The Old Route 66 Association of Texas gives 178 miles for the drive across the Panhandle. The gap comes from which alignment you count: the highway was straightened several times between 1926 and the day the interstate replaced it.

Interstate 40, which took over almost all of the route, runs 177 miles across Texas. Texas numbers its I-40 exits by the mile, starting from zero at Glenrio, so the exit number tells you how far you are from New Mexico. That makes the state easy to read on a map: Shamrock is around exit 163, Amarillo around exit 70, Adrian at exit 22.

Texas is also where the halfway point of the whole road sits. Adrian, 47 miles west of Amarillo, is 1,139 miles from Chicago and 1,139 miles from Los Angeles, and the sign outside the Midpoint Cafe says so.

Route 66 Texas map: the stops in order

Here is the state as a list you can follow on a map, east to west, with the I-40 exit closest to each town.

For the full road, town by town and state by state, see the Route 66 map with cities.

Shamrock: the U-Drop Inn and Tower Conoco Station

You leave Oklahoma at Texola, a near ghost town on the 100th Meridian, and Shamrock is the first real town in Texas, about 15 miles on. Its reason to stop is on the corner of Route 66 and US 83: the Tower Conoco Station and U-Drop Inn, built in 1936. Two Art Deco towers in green glazed tile and brick rise over the old Conoco station and the cafe beside it. It is the building on the photo at the top of this page.

The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997 and restored between 2000 and 2003. Today it holds the Shamrock visitor center and the Chamber of Commerce, and the doors are open to travelers. Pixar fans will recognize it: in Cars it became Ramone's House of Body Art.

The cafe inside has had a few lives since then. In February 2025 new operators, Lianne and Aldo Halpern, held a grand reopening with an Americana menu made from scratch: brisket, pulled pork, meatloaf and roasted chicken. At the reopening they posted hours of 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday to Saturday, from March through October, and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays in winter. Hours on small Route 66 cafes move with the season, so call before you plan lunch around it.

One change for sleeping: the Route 66 Inn in Shamrock was listed as permanently closed in summer 2026, so don't count on a bed here. I cover the alternatives below.

McLean: the first Phillips 66 station in Texas and the Devil's Rope Museum

McLean, at exit 141, is the town that feels most like the 1950s. When Route 66 arrived in 1927 it shifted from the railroad to the road, and at its peak it had 22 auto-related businesses, three-quarters of them service stations. It was the last Route 66 town in Texas to be bypassed by I-40. The downtown was listed on the National Register as the McLean Commercial Historic District in 2004.

The Phillips 66 station

In 1929, Phillips Petroleum chose McLean for its first station in Texas. It is a little Tudor Revival cottage with shutters and an outside brick chimney, in the style of the cottage stations oil companies built at the time. It sold gas for five decades and closed in 1977. Restored, with vintage pumps out front, it stands at 218 West First Street, and it is one of the best photos in the state.

Devil's Rope Museum

At 100 Kingsley Street, the Devil's Rope Museum fills a building that was a Sears Roebuck brassiere factory from 1950. The plant made 5,000 bras a day and earned McLean the nickname "The Uplift Town." After it closed in the 1970s, Panhandle rancher Delbert Trew turned it into a museum, opened in 1991. Inside are more than 2,000 varieties of barbed wire, the tools that strung it, Dust Bowl artifacts and, because this is McLean, a bra made of barbed wire. The same building houses the Texas Old Route 66 Museum. It is a small-town museum, so call ahead before you make a detour for it.

If you want to sleep in McLean, the Cactus Inn is the motel I recommend in Texas: opened in 1951 as the West Wind Motel, rooms themed for the Route 66 states, and its neon cactus still standing. More on it in my list of the best Route 66 motels.

Alanreed and the Jericho Gap

West of McLean the road passes Alanreed and the remains of Jericho. Between them lay the Jericho Gap, a dirt stretch of early Route 66 that turned to mud in the rain and trapped cars. The Texas association notes that the rough dirt alignment is still visible. It is a story to know as you drive by on pavement, not a road to try in a rental.

Groom: the leaning tower and the cross

Groom, around exits 110 to 112, has two landmarks you can see from the interstate, and both still stand.

The leaning water tower, called the Leaning Tower of Britten, was a working tower slated for demolition. Ralph Britten bought it and moved it to stand at a deliberate tilt of about 10 degrees, as an advertisement for his truck stop. The truck stop closed in the mid-1980s after an electrical fire, but the tower stayed, and at Christmas the town lights the multicolored star on top. Pull off for the photo; there is nothing to visit inside.

A short way west stands the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, 190 feet tall and built in 1995. It is run by Cross Ministries, a nonprofit, off I-40 at exit 112 on County Road 2, with bronze sculptures of the Stations of the Cross around the base and a gift shop in the visitor center. You do not have to be religious to find the scale of it startling on a flat horizon.

Conway: where the Bug Ranch used to be

This is the stop most free guides still get wrong. For years, the Slug Bug Ranch sat on the south frontage road of I-40 in Conway, at exit 96: five Volkswagen Beetles buried nose-down, a joke on Cadillac Ranch, created by the Crutchfield family in 2002. After a dispute over the property, the Texas Old Route 66 Association helped move it, and the new Bug Ranch opened in Amarillo on June 14, 2024, with 14 Beetles buried nose-down. A nonprofit, the Bug Ranch Association, runs it now, and you can spray paint the cars as you can at Cadillac Ranch.

So in Conway itself there is no longer much to stop for. The new Bug Ranch is at 1415 Sunrise Drive in Amarillo, near the Big Texan RV Ranch. It is not on Route 66 itself, so treat it as a bonus stop while you are in Amarillo.

Route 66 in Amarillo: Sixth Avenue, the Big Texan and Cadillac Ranch

Amarillo is the only city on Texas 66 and the place where you will want to slow down. Plan on an afternoon and an evening here, or a morning if you sleep in town and leave early.

The Sixth Street historic district

Route 66 came through Amarillo on Sixth Avenue, and 13 blocks of it, between Georgia and Forrest, were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994 as the U.S. Route 66-Sixth Street Historic District. The road there was paved with gravel in 1921 and got asphalt over concrete when it became Route 66 in 1926. The buildings mix Spanish Revival, Art Deco and Art Moderne.

Look for the Natatorium, known as the Nat, built in 1922 as an indoor pool and turned into an Art Deco ballroom in 1926, and for the 1937 Taylor's Texaco station. Today the street is antique shops, galleries, bars and restaurants. For lunch, the GoldenLight Cafe has been on Sixth since 1946, and the city's tourism office says it may be the oldest restaurant in Amarillo. It is on my list of the best Route 66 diners.

The Big Texan Steak Ranch

Bob Lee opened the Big Texan on Route 66 in 1960 and moved it to the I-40 frontage road in 1970, where it still stands at 7701 Interstate 40 Access Road. It is a show as much as a steakhouse. For the 72-ounce steak challenge you pay $72 up front and get the steak, a shrimp cocktail, a baked potato, a salad and a roll. Finish everything within one hour and the meal is free. Roughly one challenger in ten succeeds.

You do not need to attempt it to enjoy the place; most people order a normal steak and watch. The Big Texan also runs a motel next door, with 54 rooms, if you want the full experience in one parking lot.

Cadillac Ranch

West of town, ten Cadillacs from model years 1949 to 1963 stand buried nose-first in a field beside I-40. The Ant Farm art collective, Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez and Doug Michels, created it in 1974 with backing from the Amarillo millionaire Stanley Marsh 3. It was moved two miles west in 1997, away from the growing city.

It sits on private land, but visitors are welcome and admission is free. Bring a can of spray paint: adding your layer is expected, and the cars lost their original colors decades ago. Every so often the whole row gets repainted at once: in June 2024 the cars went gray primer for the 50th anniversary. Cadillac Ranch is also on my list of the best Route 66 attractions.

Vega: the 1924 Magnolia station

Vega, at exit 36, has one small, perfect stop. Colonel J.T. Owen built the Magnolia station in 1924 on the Ozark Trail, two years before the road became Route 66. The attendant pumped gas downstairs and lived upstairs. Over the years it sold Magnolia, Phillips 66 and Conoco, and later became a barbershop.

After I-40 bypassed Vega, the building sat empty for nearly 30 years. In 2001 the city won a National Park Service Route 66 preservation grant to restore it, and it reopened as a visitor center in 2004. You will find it on Main Street, near the Oldham County courthouse.

The midpoint of Route 66: Adrian and the Midpoint Cafe

Adrian, at exit 22, is the halfway point of the whole road, 1,139 miles from Chicago and 1,139 miles from Los Angeles. Fran Houser, who ran the Midpoint Cafe for years, inspired the character Flo in Pixar's Cars.

The cafe is at 305 West Historic Route 66. The Texas Historical Commission calls it reportedly the oldest continuously operated eatery on Route 66 in Texas, and the reason to stop is the homemade pie and the photo by the halfway sign. It has changed hands since Fran retired, and it still serves travelers.

The one thing to plan around: the Texas Historical Commission lists the cafe as open seasonally, from March through October. If you are crossing Texas from November to February, come for the sign and the photo and have lunch in Amarillo instead. The Bent Door cafe and station in Adrian is closed.

Glenrio: the ghost town on the state line

Glenrio, at exit 0, straddles the Texas and New Mexico line, 73 miles west of Amarillo and 41 miles east of Tucumcari. It started in 1903 as a siding on the Rock Island Railroad and became an overnight stop on Route 66, with diners, bars, motels and gas stations in the middle of empty grassland. When I-40 passed it by in the 1970s, the town emptied.

The Glenrio Historic District was listed on the National Register in 2007. The old roadbed runs past about 17 abandoned buildings, including the Texas Longhorn Motel, whose sign read "Motel, Last in Texas" to eastbound drivers and "Motel, First in Texas" to westbound ones. Two of the buildings are still lived in, so take your photos from the road and don't go inside.

West of Glenrio, the original road into New Mexico is 17 miles of gravel to San Jon, with a damaged bridge on the way. In a rental car or an RV, go back to I-40 for that stretch. The rest of the way west is in my guide to Route 66 stops in New Mexico.

How many days do you need for Route 66 in Texas?

One day is enough for the Panhandle. On the interstate alone it is under three hours from the Oklahoma line to Glenrio; with the stops above, it fills a full day. In my two-week Route 66 itinerary, Texas is split across two days on purpose: Clinton, Oklahoma, to Amarillo on day 6, then a short day 7 from Amarillo to Tucumcari, with Cadillac Ranch and the Midpoint Cafe in the morning.

I prefer the two-day split. It puts you on Sixth Avenue in the evening and at Cadillac Ranch in the morning light. If you are deciding how long the whole trip should be, I broke it down in how long does Route 66 take. And since so much of Texas 66 is frontage road, my comparison of Route 66 vs I-40 helps you decide where to stay on the old road and where to let the interstate carry you.

Where to stay on Route 66 in Texas

Amarillo is the easy answer. It has every kind of hotel, it sits almost exactly in the middle of the state's stretch, and it puts you close to Sixth Avenue, the Big Texan and Cadillac Ranch. The Big Texan's own 54-room motel is the themed choice. If you travel by RV, I listed the Amarillo campgrounds in my guide to Route 66 RV parks and camping.

For a night on the old road itself, book the Cactus Inn in McLean. It is small and the town is very quiet, which is the point. Shamrock's Route 66 Inn closed in 2026, so outside Amarillo and McLean the Texas choices are thin.

The other option is to push on: Tucumcari, New Mexico, is 41 miles past Glenrio, and its Blue Swallow Motel is on more Route 66 postcards than any other. The Field Manual lists nine hotels and nine restaurants for Texas on three budgets, because in the Panhandle you want a confirmed bed before dark.

Weather on Route 66 in Texas

The Panhandle is high plains, not desert. Amarillo sits at 3,662 feet, and the numbers below are its 1991 to 2020 averages.

Three things to know. First, the wind: the Weather Channel has ranked Amarillo the windiest city in the United States, and on the open stretches west of town you will feel it in a high-sided vehicle or on a motorcycle. Second, spring brings hail, tornadoes and dust storms, so keep an eye on the forecast in April and May. Third, winter is usually mild but not always: snowfall averages close to 18 inches a season, and blizzards do happen. Check the forecast before you leave Oklahoma.

The best months for Texas are the same as for the whole road: late April to early June, and September to October. October is the sweet spot, with highs in the low 70s, and the Midpoint Cafe still open until the end of the month. My month-by-month guide is in the best time to drive Route 66, and the fall details are in Route 66 in the fall.

What changed on Texas Route 66

• Bug Ranch, Conway. Moved to 1415 Sunrise Drive in Amarillo and reopened with 14 Beetles on June 14, 2024. Nothing left to see at the old site.
• U-Drop Inn Cafe, Shamrock. Reopened under new operators in February 2025, with shorter winter hours.
• Route 66 Inn, Shamrock. Listed as permanently closed in summer 2026.
• Midpoint Cafe, Adrian. Open seasonally, March through October.
• Bent Door, Adrian. Closed.
• Glenrio to San Jon. Gravel and a damaged bridge; use I-40.

These are the kinds of changes my book flags with "verify operating status before travel." If we couldn't verify it, we left it out.

The short version

Texas is about 186 miles of Route 66, and one day covers it, two if you want an evening in Amarillo. Stop at the U-Drop Inn in Shamrock, the Phillips station and barbed wire museum in McLean, the leaning tower in Groom, Sixth Avenue, the Big Texan and Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, the Magnolia station in Vega, the Midpoint Cafe in Adrian and the ghost town of Glenrio. Coming from the east, my guide to Route 66 stops in Oklahoma takes you to the state line. The Centennial Edition Field Manual has the Texas chapter with its maps, GPS waypoints, nine restaurants and nine hotels, so the Panhandle is more than a blur through the windshield.