Hydro, Oklahoma, Home of Lucille's

Hydro is a small town on the Oklahoma plains, but its Route Sixty-Six pedigree is genuine. The landmark here is a two-story service station built in nineteen twenty-nine that became synonymous with one woman: Lucille Hamons, who took over with her husband in nineteen forty-one and ran it for nearly sixty years. She earned the nickname Mother of the Mother Road by doing whatever stranded travelers needed, pumping gas, changing headlights, fixing flats, and during the hard years of the Depression she sometimes traded fuel for whatever a family could spare.

The station was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen ninety-seven, two years before Lucille received Oklahoma's Route Sixty-Six Hall of Fame Award. She kept the doors open until her death in August of two thousand.