Texola Ghost Town

Texola sits near the Texas line on old Route 66 and is one of western Oklahoma's most atmospheric near-ghost towns. The community once served farmers, ranchers and highway travelers but declined as agricultural change, population loss and interstate-era transportation shifted commerce away from small roadside towns. Its location made it a gateway community for motorists entering or leaving Oklahoma. Service stations, cafés and small businesses once benefited from through traffic, while the surrounding plains supported a rural population that has since thinned considerably. Today Texola contains a scattering of occupied and abandoned structures, old commercial buildings and the remnants of its Route 66 past. The town should be explored respectfully from public roads because many properties are private and some structures are unstable. What makes Texola memorable is not one preserved attraction but the sense of transition: it is a real community reduced to a fraction of its former scale, standing at the edge of both Oklahoma and the historic highway era.