DEPEW, Okla. – Some Oklahoma towns that once thrived along Route 66 are now ghost towns.
One town in between Oklahoma City and Tulsa once thrived because of Route 66, but that same road eventually led to its demise.
“It’s hanging on and surviving, but persisting against the odds, as I like to say,” said Jeffrey Schmidt and OU professor.
Depew, Oklahoma has a population that is about one-fourth of what it used to be.
In its heyday, the town was booming; it had a movie theater and multiple other businesses.
Schmidt is a business professor at OU, but it’s his love for preserving history that took him all over the state documenting disappearing towns.
“Nobody wants to be told they live in a ghost town, and they get very offended about it,” he said. “I didn’t want to offend anybody. In fact, the goal was to bring awareness and get people off of the interstates and the turnpikes to come into these places.”
Today, one of the busiest spots in town is the Depew Senior Center. That’s where lifelong resident and unofficial town historian Sue Craig lives.
“I was born here,” said Craig. “I’ve lived here all my life.”
Craig said she stays in Depew because this is home.
“But what’s sad is when you grew up and you’ve seen the businesses, you’ve been in the businesses, and you knew what they were and who had them. And then now it’s blank, but you have the memory,” said Craig.
Route 66 used to run right down Main Street in Depew, and then they rerouted it just down this hill in order to have a straighter road.
The big blow to this small community happened when the turnpike was constructed.
“There’s this kind of double-edged sword when it comes to towns and highways like Route 66,” said Oklahoma historian Dr. Matthew Pearce.
Pearce said in the beginning, Route 66 used existing roads, but as automobile travel improved and the trucking industry expanded, engineers started looking at efficiency. They moved original stretches of the highway and then built interstates.
“In some ways, Route 66 was a victim of its own success,” said Pierce. ” The interstate highway system was a product of the Cold War and concerns about national security and the need to get military vehicles and goods from one place to another in case there was a Soviet attack.”
Interstate 40 turned Route 66 into a frontage road, which hurt Texola, a town on the Oklahoma-Texas border. Schmidt highlights this issue in his book.
“There’s about 50 people left,” said Schmidt.
I-40 also bypassed Bridgeport.
“(Bridgeport) had huge three-story hotels. Now it’s got about 100 people left,” said Schmidt.
The turnpikes and interstates aren’t the only things to blame for the decline in these towns.
“Great Depression hits and you know, with the decline in the agricultural economy, you start to see those towns decline,” said Pearce.
Towns like Foss and Canute in western Oklahoma were hurt as they were dependent on cotton and wheat farming.
“That decline is that’s regardless of Route 66 being there or not,” said Pearce.
In northeast Oklahoma, Cardin and Pitcher boomed because of zinc and lead mining, but pollution and contamination turned them into ghost towns.
Pearce said if you look at thriving Route 66 towns like El Reno, you’ll see a common thread.
“They have an active and dedicated group that are interested in seeing their community thrive,” said Pearce. “That’s the secret sauce.”
Sue Craig is among a group of Depew residents working to welcome visitors, hoping that with the renewed buzz around Route 66, more travelers will pull off the turnpike and find the answer to this sign.
One thing that draws people to Depew is a famous artist who lives there.
This article was originally published by News on 6. You can see the original story here.