A Western Detour

  McLean is the farthest east I have been on the Texas stretch of Route 66. At McLean, I headed north towards the town of Pampa and other locales in the northeastern Panhandle on my vacation last fall. I will discuss these areas in the near future. For now, I would like to talk more about Route 66.
  West of Amarillo, there isn't much left of the old road, which is a stark contrast to the stretch east of the city.
What remains of Route 66 in the western Panhandle is mostly the main streets of the few, struggling towns that still exist. Otherwise, there are a few short fragments here and there. Interstate 40 was built mostly to the south of Route 66 in the western Panhandle and north of Route 66 in the eastern Panhandle.
  There are only 4 towns in Texas along Interstate 40 west of Amarillo. The easternmost one, Bushland, has seen quite a bit of growth in recent years since it has become a bedroom community for Amarillo, which is only seven miles away. Farther west are Wildorado, Vega and Adrian. Bushland's population has recently surpassed 2,000 and, a few years ago, a high school was built to educate teenagers that live in Bushland and also in the many housing developments that have sprung up in the area in recent years. The population of Bushland had hovered at around 300 for decades before the recent surge.
  Of these 4 towns, Bushland is the only one in Potter County (Amarillo is the county seat). The others are in Oldham County and Vega is the county seat of that county.
  On the east edge of Oldham County is Wildorado, which has about 95 people. The population seems to have peaked at around 250, from what I can tell. Eleven miles farther west is Vega, with 884 people. The population of Vega has shrunk, but not by much. At its peak, Vega had 936 people. The Oldham County Courthouse in Vega looks sort of like a museum. 14 miles west of Vega is Adrian, with 166 people. It actually gained population in the last decade, seven people, after decades of decline that saw it shrink from a peak of about 325 people.
 The business loops through all of these towns were once U.S. Highway 66.
  Twenty-three miles west of Adrian lies the most significant stretch of Route 66 in Texas west of Amarillo. It is a short stretch, but very historically significant. It is actually the east end of a long stretch of the old highway that lies mostly in new Mexico, but has its terminus in Texas. This stretch of the old highway begins just east of the ghost town of Glenrio, which was one of the more well known towns along the entire highway back in the day.
  It is sort of ironic that, of the eight states that U.S. Hghway 66 traversed, the biggest one, Texas, had the second shortest stretch of the highway, about 180 miles. The state with the shortest stretch of the Mother Road is Kansas, which claimed only 13 miles of the highway because the highway cut across the far southeast corner of that state.