Two of my favorite travel experiences could be described in the same way: a street lined with roadside relics and architectural time capsules of eras gone by. One is Route 66, and the other is any U.S. ghost town—the two could be called kindred spirits, and both make for a kitschy road trip.
Among the neon lights, the Muffler Men, and the hot springs, the following ghost towns harken to the Mother Road’s heyday, before the modern interstate system left them in the dust by the mid-’60s. Whether filled with roaming burros, legendary mud, or Wild West stories, here are six ghost towns you should brake for along Route 66.
Visit a ghost town showing signs of life in Spencer, Missouri
Spencer, about 23 miles west of Springfield, peaked in the mid-1920s with a barber shop, café, gas station, feed store, and general store. But when Route 66 was rerouted away from the town in 1961, businesses shuttered and the scant population dwindled to zero. Brick and sandstone buildings lay dormant until Francis and Mary Lynn Ryan began refurbishing structures in 2007. In 2022, writer Ed Klein bought the town, restoring Spencer Station to its original glory. The current population is zero, but such restoration efforts are dusting off Spencer’s sleepy stasis. Travelers can park for photos by vintage gas pumps and go inside to peruse memorabilia. And work is underway to bring the general store, barber shop, museums, and ’30s-style café back to life.
See why there’s “no place like Texola,” Oklahoma
Check out the many abandoned buildings in Texola.
Photo by melissamn/Shutterstock
Located on the Texas border, Texola was an agricultural hub in the early 1900s before Route 66 brought a flurry of service stations, inns, and eateries to the town. By the 1930s, the population rose to nearly 600. But when I-40 bypassed the community in the early 1970s, shops closed and the population plunged. About 40 residents still call Texola home, but today the town is mostly a stopover for atmospheric photo ops at the defunct Magnolia Service Station, a one-room stone jail, and a shuttered diner painted with the town’s unofficial slogan: “No place like Texola.”
Survive the muddiest stretch of Route 66 in Jericho, Texas
The Jericho Gap—an 18-mile stretch of unpaved clay road, known as the muddiest part of Route 66—gave new meaning to the term “tourist trap,” as cars regularly got stuck in the muck. The gap inspired a cottage industry of local farmers charging money to pull vehicles out with mules. When the highway was rerouted northward in 1936 to escape the mud, Jericho—a ranching and railroad town roughly 52 miles east of Amarillo that peaked at about 100 people in the 1930s—became a ghost town. Today, travelers can book ghost town tours of abandoned motor courts and filling stations.
Listen for whispers of the Wild West in Endee, New Mexico
Don’t let the “Modern Restrooms” mural fool you into thinking this town is currently up and running. Emblazoned on a long-shuttered motel in a desolate area just west of the Texas border, the sign is one of the few remaining remnants of a Wild West town that provided lodging, supplies, and entertainment for cowboys since its founding in 1882. The community began to crumble in 1952, when Route 66 was realigned to parallel the nearby Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad. Today, passersby can glimpse abandoned homes, timber bridges, and a not-so-modern motor court.
Break for burros in Oatman, Arizona
Wild donkeys regularly walk through the historic gold mining town of Oatman.
Photo by David Buzzard/Shutterstock
Nestled in the wilds of Arizona’s high desert some 28 miles southwest of Kingman, Oatman is a preserved-in-time village where wild burros roam freely and staged shootouts recall its rugged past. The small donkeys have lived here since Oatman’s mining days in the late 1800s, when the animals lugged equipment and gold ore through the Black Mountains. Today their descendants outnumber the people by about 500 to 100. Visitors can stroll Main Street to hand-feed the donkeys (“burro pellets” are available at many shops), watch a staged heist from the Oatman Outlaws, and eat “burro ears”—super-size potato chips—at the Oatman Hotel Restaurant & Bar.
Look for a neon oasis in the Mojave Desert in Amboy, California
It’s as if the workers at Roy’s Motel and Cafe are still there today.
Photo by CL Shebley/Shutterstock
Amboy, a railroad town established in 1883 as a water stop in the Mojave Desert for the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, has long been an oasis for travelers. When Route 66 passed through in 1926, the desert locale turned into a respite for road-trippers as well. The population topped out at around 200 in the 1940s, but now Amboy has no permanent residents. Its most famous attraction, Roy’s Motel & Cafe, first opened as a service station in 1938, before the café and motel were added in 1940. A 50-foot neon sign, lit in 1959, still glows today. Roy’s is currently a gift shop and gas station, but restorations are underway to reopen the motel by the end of 2026.
