Tower Station and U-Drop Inn

The building began as a drawing in the dirt. John Nunn scratched his idea for a station and cafe on the ground with an old nail, J. M. Tindall put up the money with R. C. Lewis, and the Pampa architect J. C. Berry drew the plans. It opened on April 1, 1936, at the corner where U.S. 83 crossed the new Route 66, for $23,000. Three businesses shared it: the Tower Conoco station under a four-sided spire topped with a metal tulip, the cafe, and a store that never opened as one and became extra seating. An eight-year-old won the naming contest for the cafe with U-Drop Inn, and about fifty dollars.

The names kept changing. Nunn sold the place, bought it back in 1950 and called it Nunn's Cafe. After his death in 1957 his widow Bebe sold it to Grace Brunner, who renamed it the Tower Cafe and added a Greyhound bus station. In the 1970s Fina painted it red, white and blue, and in the early 1980s James R. Tindall Sr., whose father had financed it, put back the old colors and the old name. The cafe closed in 1997, after Interstate 40 had taken the traffic around Shamrock.

In September 1997 the building went on the National Register. In 1999 the First National Bank of Shamrock bought it and gave it to the city, which restored it with federal transportation money and local fundraising. It is now the town's visitor center and chamber of commerce office, and the spire still spells out C-O-N-O-C-O.