Websites for the motels of Shamrock

Shamrock grew up at the crossing of Route 66 and US 83, and its signature building still stands at that corner: the Tower Station and U-Drop Inn, a 1936 art deco Conoco station with a flared, neon-lit tower that the Texas Historical Commission has called one of the most impressive pieces of Route 66 architecture anywhere. The town restored it, and it now serves as Shamrock's visitor center and a steady photo stop for travelers working the Texas stretch of the Mother Road. I-40 bypassed the town decades ago, but the exits sit close, and the tower keeps giving people a reason to take them.

The location does steady work. Shamrock sits about 110 miles east of Amarillo and about 190 miles west of Oklahoma City, which makes it a natural overnight break on one of the emptiest legs of I-40. Add the Route 66 pilgrimage traffic and US 83 travelers running north and south through the Panhandle, and a town of under two thousand people rents a surprising number of rooms. Most of those room decisions happen in the last hour of daylight, on a phone, somewhere between fuel stops.

Every March the town becomes something else entirely. Shamrock's St. Patrick's Celebration, held the weekend closest to the seventeenth, is by act of the Legislature the official St. Patrick's celebration of Texas, complete with a parade and a fragment of the actual Blarney Stone, brought over from Cork in 1959 and displayed downtown. Thousands of visitors land on a town with a short supply of beds, and rooms sell out across the area. The rest of the year, an independent motel here competes with a handful of chain properties at the exits and wins on price, character, and ease of booking.