We are in the ghost town of Jericho TX looking at a scene that no longer exists. Almost certainly it was gone before the milo was harvested.

The front wall of a home from the Dust Bowl-era of the 1930s is being undermined by an unstable foundation. One side of the doorway is tilting east, the other west, along an old dirt remnant of Rt 66.

The cracked doorway is balanced precariously on crumbling mortar. It came down, perhaps in the very next thunderstorm.

This was the center of the infamous "Jericho Gap," the last section of Rt 66 anywhere to be paved. Until 1937, this 18-mile stretch east of Amarillo was passable dirt when dry, but impassable gumbo after a storm. When this section was finally bypassed by pavement, about a mile north, the little town withered and died.

And now, the same soil that once trapped cars of unlucky migrants has destroyed one of the few remaining abandoned homes in Jericho TX.

(This image is on display at the Route 66 Interpretive Center, Chandler OK.)