Shamrock: Route Sixty-Six's Irish Lucky Charm

The name Shamrock traces back to eighteen ninety, when Irish immigrant sheep rancher George Nickel applied for a post office at his Panhandle dugout and named it after the clover his mother told him always brought luck. The name stuck even after the Rock Island Railway arrived in nineteen oh two and briefly called its station Wheeler.

Shamrock's most famous landmark opened on April first, nineteen thirty-six: the Tower Station and U-Drop Inn, a futuristic streamline-moderne building whose soaring concrete tower and curved canopy were said to be sketched in the dirt with a nail by its owner. It was the only restaurant within a hundred miles and called itself the swankiest eating place in the Panhandle. When Interstate Forty bypassed Route Sixty-Six, the U-Drop Inn closed. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen ninety-seven, restored by two thousand three, and achieved movie fame when Pixar modeled a character's shop after it in Cars.