Ghosts of Route 66 are found all along that storied highway between Chicago and Santa Monica. They haunt long shuttered gas stations, motels and diners, and even ghost towns.

Their voices are a faint whisper carried on the wind. But there are folks that take the time to listen, and then let fate lead them into an adventure where the line between past and present blurs. Blair and Blanca Schaffer listened. And fate led them to Jericho, Texas.

Ghosts of Route 66 in The Panhandle

According to the Texas State Historical Association, Jericho in northern Donley County was established in 1902. That was the year a townsite was platted and a station on the Chicago, Rock Island & Gulf Railroad was built. And that was also the year that a post office application was approved.

Until the Schaffer’s began their quest to document and preserve the history of Jericho, information was scarce, and vague. Only a tumble down farm house, and a derelict auto court that defied the odds and stood Texas tough against the winds of time were monuments to better times.

According to the association, “At its height in the 1930s, Jericho had three stores, a grain elevator, a tourist court, and a garage and filling station. Jericho’s population was estimated to be 100 in 1933 and fifty by 1939. Its post office was discontinued in 1955, and by the 1980s little remained at the townsite.”

Less Than Half The Story

But that sparse epitaph is less than half the story. Delbert Trew, a rancher at the infamous Jericho Gap, and the Schaffer’s, have traced the towns history to about 1880. At that time it was a mail coach stop for the changing of horses and the feeding of passengers.

After the end of the Red River Wars in the 1870s, adventurersome pioneers staked their future on the high plains of the Panhandle. They farmed, built ranches, and hardscrabble towns.

The stage stop, Jericho’s cornerstone, was little more than a dugout with access to a spring located along the road that connected Fort Elliott, later the small townof Mobeetie, and Saint’s Roost, now Clarendon. But what really put Jericho on the map was the laying of rails for the Choctaw, Oklahoma & Texas Railroad Company in 1902. The cemetery officially established in 1894 chronicles the town’s growth, it’s boom, and it’s decline.

The Good Times

The first official train arrived in Jericho on July 6, 1902. In the years that followed the construction of railroad related infrastucture, and cattle loading facilities to meet the needs of local ranchers, fueled a sense of optimism about the future of Jericho.

Then in 1926, Jericho was given another boost. That was the year that the newly minted US highway system was unveiled. One of those highways signed with a double 66 passed through Jericho, and the infamous Jericho Gap.

Delbert Trew says, “The main reason for fame came from the stretch of highway between Alanreed and Groom which went through Jericho. Called “Jericho Gap” any rains caused the dirt roads to turn into black-gumbo-mud becoming almost impassible to the vehicles of the time. Nearby farmers made a good living with their teams of work horses pulling the travellers from the mud holes. Legend has it that the enterprising farmers hauled water at night to dump in the mud holes to prolong their source of income.”

The town boomed.

End times and The Renaissance

To bypass the infamous gap, Route 66 was rerouted a half mile north of Jericho in the mid 1930s. That severed an economic lifeline. Jericho was an agricultural town struggling to survive the ravages of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. The last nail in the coffin was closure of the railroad after WWII.

Jericho withered on the vine. Soon, it was just one of the ghosts of Route 66. Buildings were razed and materials salvaged. Or they simply succumbed to the elements. Soon only cow, deer, ranchers, and the occasional adventurer in search of links to Route 66 history wandered what was once a town rich with promise.

Then came the Schaffer’s, a family with a Jericho connection. They were a passionate young couple that listened to the voices carried by the wind. And they were willing to let fate lead them on a grand adventure that promises to give Jericho a new lease on life.

And that takes us to the January 21, 2024, episode of Coffee With Jim. I will let Blanca tell the rest of the story in her own words on this episode of the Jim HInckley’s America podcast. .