Route 66 - The Great Indian Uprising of 1959

Leaving Clinton, Oklahoma, continuing west on Route 66, we passed by Foss, an official ghost town in spite of several people who still live there, and Canute, a ghost town in the making. After a nice drive of about 30 miles, we slowed down for Elk City. In 1901, the first lots were sold and Elk City became a town. As far as we could tell, even though there are almost 12,000 people who call it home, nothing much has happened there since. And then we came to Sayre, a small town of just 4,000 happy souls, but the place of several stops we wanted to make.

Downtown Sayre on a busy weekday.

 In 1901, a new rail line was built from Weatherford, Oklahoma to Texola, Oklahoma. When the railroad crossed the North Fork of the Red River, the town of Sayre sprung up. A year later, the town had almost 1,000 citizens and that's the way it stayed until the 1930's when Route 66 came through and gave the town new growth serving the travelers of The Mother Road. In the 1970's, Sayre would benefit from the natural gas and oil development in the Panhandle-Hugoton field, the largest volume gas field in the United States and the world's largest known source of helium. Between 1973 and 1993, it produced over 8-trillion cubic feet of gas.

Sayre does have one somewhat famous native son, balloonist Maxie Anderson. Maxie, Ben Abruzzo, and Larry Newman were the first to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a balloon, the Double Eagle, in 1978. But this sleepy little town may be best known for an incident that happened in 1959.


Site of the Great Indian Uprising of 1959

The Great Indian Uprising of 1959 took place at the Route 66 bridge on the edge of town. The bridge itself had suffered fire damage during a brush fire so it had been barricaded off by the highway department and a detour route marked for getting around the damaged structure. With Route 66 being the major highway through town, there were numerous out-of-state cars full of tourists on the road that Saturday. As each car bearing out-of-state license plates slowed down for the detour, a group of the local high school kids would rush up and excitedly tell the naive tourists to roll up their windows and head west as fast as possible because Indians had burned the bridge and were on the warpath! For almost an entire day, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol had its hands full stopping all of the speeding cars headed west to safety from all of those rampaging Indians.


The only Red Uprising at the bridge nowadays
are the numerous Red Ant beds beside the
roadway. DO NOT mess with these things!

Like Elk City a few miles away, not much has happened here except for the high drama of the Indian uprising over 50 years ago. Oh, there were 2 days of excitement in 1939 when John Ford filmed a part of his movie, "The Grapes of Wrath" here. In the movie, there is a 30-second appearance of a courthouse. Most folks think it is the capitol in Oklahoma City, but it's not. It is instead, the Beckham County Courthouse right here in Sayre, but since few people know this, there's no tourism from it. Sleepy, quiet Sayre - an opportunity for a little bit of fame passed on by. But maybe that's exactly how the friendly citizens of this Small Town America want it. After spending a little time in this nice, clean little community, I sure can't say I blame them.

The Beckham County Courthouse, famous for
being in the movie, "The Grapes of Wrath."

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Route 66 - Humped-back Ghost & The Clinton Museum

Map of Route 66 - displayed in the Route 66
Museum in Clinton, Oklahoma

Leaving Hydro and Lucille's, even though it was in the early afternoon, we kept our eyes peeled just in case we saw an elderly humped back man walking along the road. There has been a persistent rumor  for years that this portion of the Mother Road is haunted by just such a man. Said to appear in a brown trench coat wearing a Bogie-style hat pulled down over his eyes, he supposedly has been spotted walking along the old highway, especially on foggy or rainy nights. One story is that one of the locals picked him up one wet night, but the eerie little man wouldn't talk to him. Just a short distance down the road from where he had been picked up, the man tried to jump out of the moving car. The good Samaritan pulled over to the side, let him out and drove away. Two miles and only 3 minutes later, the driver passed the same man walking beside the road again! Another driver reported seeing the vagabond who suddenly appeared out of nowhere right in front of his car. He was so startled he failed to pull over far enough and hit the man. The driver slammed on his brakes and came to a stop, but when he went back to check on the poor victim, there was nobody there!

From Bridgeport, east of Hydro, to Clinton, the road has a number of dips and there are stretches of gravel, but most of it is concrete with little half-curbs that at one time were very innovative. The highway engineers claimed they would improve drainage, but in reality, they could turn a small hill into a solid sheet of water during a hard rain. If you got between two hills with these half-curbs on the road, you would be stuck there until the weather cleared. Worse yet, other cars would often come sliding to the bottom too, making it even more dangerous to your health and well-being. A 2nd purpose of these curbs was to redirect errant vehicles back onto the road. They did manage to do that, but many cars were flipped over in the process. Not surprisingly, you don't often see these kinds of curbs anymore.


The Route 66 Museum in Clinton, Oklahoma
under threatening skies.

So we made it to Clinton without running up against a curb and flipping over or spotting an eerie, hunched-back little man in a Bogie hat, but clouds had started to build up while we dinked around at Lucille's and by the time we stopped at the Route 66 Museum, the wind had come up and it looked like a nasty storm was headed our way. There were a few cars in the parking lot as we arrived, but as we pulled in, a car that was parked in the first slot next to the door pulled out and we grabbed it. Feeling lucky today! Well, actually, "grabbed" may not be the right word as there wasn't anyone else pulling in at the same time so there wasn't exactly a lot of competition for it and also, the 3rd slot from the  door was vacant, but still...

Old truck from the Dust Bowl era complete with
the desert water bag for overheated radiators.

The Route 66 Museum in Clinton is definitely worth a stop and is probably one of the best museums on the whole route. The displays are well done and take you on an historical journey from the beginning of the route to present. Youngest-daughter and I walked through it together, looking at the pictures and artifacts, reading the informational signs and I told her a few personal stories of how things were in the 60's & 70's. We both enjoyed it a lot and it certainly brought back memories for me. The gift shop was most impressive - big and clean with a lot of items for sale at a reasonable price. The two ladies working the check-out were friendly and charming; asking where we were from and other small talk. Youngest-daughter and I both made several small purchases, things we couldn't possibly live without and left with smiles on our faces.


Now there's a Dr. Pepper of just
about the right size!

The perfect car for traveling Route 66!



Youngest-daughter shopping for something
she just can't live without.

The Trade Winds Inn - an old Elvis hang-out.

It hadn't rained yet when we emerged, but the clouds were still dark and angry.  I strolled to the end of the parking lot and took a couple of pictures of the Trade Winds Best Western Inn across the street. Definitely showing its age. At one time though, it actually was "THE" place to stay in this area. As a matter of fact, Elvis Presley used to stay there every time he was going through on one of his concert tours and everywhere Elvis stayed, other famous musicians stayed. There wasn't any tour buses in the parking lot and there probably haven't been for a good long while.

It was time to put Clinton in our rear view mirror and that's just what we did. We were headed to Sayre, more Grapes of Wrath history and an amusing story about the Great Indian Uprising of 1959.

Go to the first Route 66 entry here.

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Route 66 - Lucille

(historical photo)

West from Fort Reno is, to me, where the "Grapes of Wrath" historic Route 66 really starts. To the east is grasslands and big cities. In the middle is the oil producing area. But right in here is where the farming and ranch lands begin; the home of farmers and small town citizens who, Beverly Hillbillies style, packed up everything they had and with nothing left to lose, headed west to what they hoped was the promised land.
In Chapter 12 of John Steinbeck's epic novel, "The Grapes of Wrath," he eulogized Route 66, giving it the enduring nickname of "The Mother Road" while describing the route and the plight of the people traveling west on her.

"Highway 66 is the main migrant road. 66 - the long concrete path across the country, waving gently, up and down on the map, from the Mississippi to Bakersfield - over the red lands and the gray lands, twisting up into the mountain, crossing the Divide and down into the bright and terrible desert, and across the desert to the mountains again, and into the rich California Valleys.

66 is the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder of tractors and shrinking ownership, from the desert's slow northward invasion, from the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what little richness is there. From all of these the people are in flight, and they come into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads. 66 is the mother road, the road of flight.

The people in flight streamed out on 66, sometimes in a single car, sometimes a little caravan. All day they rolled slowly along the road, and at night they stopped near water. In the day ancient leaky radiators sent up columns of steam, loose connecting rods hammered and pounded. And the men driving the trucks and the overloaded cars listened apprehensively. How far between towns? It is a terror between towns. If something breaks - well, if something breaks we camp right here while Jim walks to town and gets a part and walks back and - how much food we got?

Listen to the motor. Listen to the wheels. Listen with your ears and with your hands on the steering wheel, listen with the palm of your hand on the gear-shift level, listen with your feet on the floor boards. Listen to the pounding old jalopy with all your senses, for a change of tone, a variation of rhythm may mean - a week here? That rattle - that's tappets. Don't hurt a bit. Tappets can rattle till Jesus comes again without no harm. But that thudding as the car moves along..."

And this part of the road seems to be the start of where most of the Route 66 "different" people make their homes. The "odd," the "not exactly normal," the "interesting" - the eccentrics that seem to be in more abundance making their home along 66 than possibly anywhere else in the world. It's they who brought Route 66 back to life after the government decided she was no longer useful, no longer worth keeping. It's almost as if the folks who live along The Mother Road are one big family. Sometimes very dysfunctional, but family nonetheless. If I had only a week to travel and see Route 66, this is where I would start and west is the direction I would go.

The small town of Hydro was founded in 1901 and was named for the good well-water found in the area. Hydro has always been a small, agriculture town, but when Route 66 came through, the town prospered by providing services to the travelers. When the interstate was opened, most of the Route 66-based businesses went under and Hydro reverted to being a small, sleepy agriculture town.


Lucille's

Not all of the Route 66-based businesses closed though. In 1941, Lucille Hamons and her husband Carl purchased a gas station that had been built in 1929 along with 5 tourist courts behind the station. Located along a rural stretch of Route 66 just outside of Hydro, the station included a small convenience store and rooms above the gas pumps where the Hamons made their home. Soon, needing to bring in more income to take care of the growing family (they eventually had 3 children), Carl purchased a truck and started hauling. Lucille was largely left alone to mind the station and tourist court and to raise the children.

In an interview, Lucille said, "After Carl got a truck to earn more money, I was alone here to run this place. During this time, people from Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, and eastern Oklahoma were traveling the road to the West Coast to find jobs. Many times I would have people stop that were completely broke and I would feed them and give them gas in exchange for some appliance or other articles of small value they might have. Sometimes I would just buy their old broke-down cars and then they would catch the bus and head on west looking for work."

The motor court rooms behind the station.

When I-40 was completed in 1962, it cut off access to the 5 motor court rooms so the Hamons closed them. Carl passed away in 1971, but Lucille hung on and kept the station open.

In 1997, my wife and I had the fortuitous pleasure of happening upon Lucille's while traveling from one place to another, stopping for a soda and met Lucille in person. We browsed her little store while she kept up a constant chatter of stories of the old days. We had not conducted any Route 66 research at that time and didn't actually realize this was a rather famous lady. We purchased our cold drinks and ended up spending some time listening to her. She was a heck of a character, so friendly and welcoming and full of energy. Before leaving, I spotted a glass bottle of Route 66 Root Beer so I bought it just to keep as a souvenir. Lucille rang it up and then asked if I wanted her to sign it. I didn't want to hurt her feelings and it didn't matter to me so I said sure, that would be right nice of her. After we arrived back home, I did my research on her and found out we had spent part of an afternoon visiting with one of the true icons of Route 66.

Historical marker at Lucille's.

Lucille spent 59 years living on Route 66 and serving and caring for thousands during that time. With her story, the longevity of her little place of business, and her outgoing personality, but mostly because of the countless times she had fed a hungry traveler and given them a place to spend the night for free, Lucille Hamons became known all across the land as The Mother of The Mother Road. Lucille passed away in August, 2000. Hundreds of people from near and far came to her funeral to pay their respects and many a tear was shed by people whose lives she touched. And I still have that bottle of Route 66 root beer autographed by Lucille Hamon.  It's one of my most prized possessions. Thanks for the memories, Lucille.

Go to the first Route 66 entry here.

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