Pop Hicks Restaurant

Ethan "Pop" Hicks founded the restaurant in 1936 — the depth of the Dust Bowl years, ten years after Route 66's 1926 designation, and a moment when most of western Oklahoma was economically devastated by the combination of agricultural collapse and the broader Great Depression. The decision to open a diner in Clinton at that moment was either reckless or visionary depending on perspective; the restaurant survived in part because Route 66 was bringing through a steady trickle of westbound migrant traffic — the same Dust Bowl families that John Steinbeck would chronicle in The Grapes of Wrath three years later.

Pop Hicks's original operating model targeted both the local Clinton regulars and the through-traveler segment. The early menus emphasized hearty, inexpensive, hot meals — biscuits and gravy, fried eggs with country ham, plate lunches with meat and two sides — that worked equally well for a Clinton farmer coming in for breakfast before a day in the fields and for a migrant family stopping briefly during a long westward drive. That dual-audience positioning has remained essentially stable across nine decades.

Pop himself ran the restaurant through the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, gradually transitioning to ownership-and-operations continuity through subsequent operators while the Hicks name remained on the building. The restaurant's identity has been continuous enough that long-time Clinton residents can describe a meal at Pop Hicks in 1955 in essentially the same terms as a meal there in 2025 — same counter, same booth layout, similar menu, same unpretentious diner culture.

Breakfast is Pop Hicks's strongest meal and the standard recommendation for first-time visitors. The menu is classic Oklahoma diner — biscuits and gravy (with hand-made sausage gravy, the signature breakfast item), country ham with eggs, chicken fried steak with eggs, pancakes, omelets, and full breakfast plates with potatoes and toast. Breakfast is served from 6am open through mid-morning and prices run $5 to $12 across the full menu.

Lunch and dinner are anchored by the daily plate specials — a rotating set of meat-and-two-sides plates that change daily and represent the heart of the restaurant's local-regulars business. Typical plate specials include chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes, country fried chicken with green beans, meatloaf with corn, pot roast with carrots, and Friday catfish or fried fish plates. Burgers, sandwiches, and salads round out the lunch menu; the chicken fried steak sandwich is a perennial recommendation.

The pies are the restaurant's signature dessert program. The coconut cream pie is the headline item — a substantial slice of meringue-topped coconut custard pie that has been on the menu essentially unchanged for decades and is widely considered the best pie on the Oklahoma Route 66 corridor. Other rotating pies include chocolate cream, banana cream, lemon meringue, and pecan (typically only on the menu in fall and winter). Save room for pie; the kitchen does not bake on the same scale every day and the most popular pies sometimes sell out by mid-afternoon.

The construction of I-40 across western Oklahoma in the late 1960s and early 1970s bypassed Clinton — the interstate runs parallel to Route 66 about half a mile south of Gary Boulevard, and the bypass shifted through-traveler highway traffic away from the original alignment. The economic effect on Clinton businesses that depended on Route 66 through-traffic was substantial; many of the original 1950s-era motels, filling stations, and diners closed within a decade of the bypass.

Pop Hicks survived the bypass primarily because the local-regulars business was strong enough to sustain the restaurant even with reduced through-traveler volume. The Clinton regular customer base — farmers, ranchers, downtown business workers, retirees who had been eating breakfast at Pop Hicks for decades — kept the restaurant economically viable through the late 1970s and 1980s when many comparable Route 66 diners closed. That period of operating primarily as a local diner, rather than as a Route 66 tourism destination, preserved the restaurant's identity through the leanest years.

The Route 66 preservation movement gained momentum in the 1990s and 2000s — the same period when the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum opened across the street (1995) and when Clinton began deliberately marketing itself as a Route 66 destination. Pop Hicks's traveler-customer share grew substantially as road-trippers rediscovered Clinton's original alignment, and the current customer mix is roughly half Clinton regulars and half Route 66 tourists — a balance that the restaurant's character handles comfortably.

Pop Hicks is the natural lunch or dinner anchor for a Clinton day-trip and pairs most obviously with the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum directly across the street. The classic plan: arrive at the museum at 10am for a 2-hour walk-through, then walk across Gary Boulevard for a 12:30pm lunch at Pop Hicks — chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and the coconut cream pie for dessert — and either continue west toward Elk City and Texola or return east toward Oklahoma City.

Breakfast at Pop Hicks is the alternative anchor — arrive at 7am or 8am for biscuits and gravy, then walk across to the museum for a 9am opening visit. The combination works especially well for road-trippers continuing west from an Oklahoma City overnight; the 80-mile morning drive from OKC puts visitors in Clinton in time for a leisurely breakfast and museum visit before continuing toward the Texas Panhandle.

For visitors who prefer a more substantial sit-down meal, the Trade Winds Inn diner directly across Gary Boulevard (a few hundred yards west of Pop Hicks) is the natural alternative — a slightly larger diner with longer daily hours, similar pricing, and the historic Elvis Presley connection that draws its own steady stream of road-trippers. Many Clinton visitors eat one meal at Pop Hicks and another at Trade Winds during a single day-trip.