Plano, Missouri: First Ghost Town West of Springfield

You're passing through Plano, the first of a cluster of ghost towns along old sixty-six west of Springfield. This hollow was already old before the highway came. In nineteen oh two a limestone general store rose here, built by the Jackson family on a route that had served travelers for generations as part of the old Wire Road, the telegraph line strung from Saint Louis to Fort Smith in eighteen fifty-eight.

The post office opened in eighteen ninety-five and closed by nineteen oh three, a signal the community was never meant to grow. Route sixty-six brought a brief revival of traffic, but when Interstate forty-four arrived it pulled travelers north and Plano went quiet for good. Two pre-highway stone structures still stand in the trees, remnants of a crossroads that the modern world simply forgot to mention.