Stroud, Oklahoma: Oil, Rock Café, and the Skyliner

James Stroud, a trader and developer, established a post here in eighteen ninety-two, and the town relocated in eighteen ninety-eight to meet the Frisco Railroad tracks. Oil was discovered near Stroud in nineteen twenty-three, and three years later Route Sixty-Six was aligned right down Main Street. The Rock Café, built during the Great Depression using sandstone excavated during Route Sixty-Six construction, became a twenty-four-hour landmark and was still drawing pilgrims decades later.

The Skyliner Motel opened in the summer of nineteen fifty-nine, its neon sign and ten L-shaped units surviving even a nineteen ninety-nine tornado. Stroud sits at the junction of Creek and Lincoln Counties, a small town that managed to hold on to several genuine Mother Road survivors long after the interstate bypassed most of its neighbors.