Posted on 05/21/2007 6:53:47 AM PDT by libertarianPA
MIAMI, Okla. - The Riviera Courts motel is crumbling away and nobody seems to care. Once a stop along Route 66, the 2,400-mile neon carnival that connected hundreds of communities from Chicago to Los Angeles, this late-1930s Mission Revival is just a weather-worn building on the side of a country road in far northeast Oklahoma.
Next door, soybean farmers Richard and Rosemary Woolard watch the place deteriorate from their front porch.
"Been a lot of changes in this old county," 77-year-old Richard Woolard says plainly.
The Riviera Courts is among hundreds of mom-and-pop motels that met their demise along the ribbon of Route 66 as America's interstate system siphoned traffic off the Mother Road onto a four-lane, divided highway called progress.
In Oklahoma, with more Route 66 miles than any of the eight states it flows through, many motels are derelict or abandoned, used as junk yards, makeshift car lots and flophouses.
Owners who inherited these historical footnotes have no use for them, and would rather sell the properties to a developer if the price was right.
Today, many structures that made the road what it was — the diners, family-owned service stations, barbecue joints — have fallen apart. With efforts to fix up these architectural landmarks scarce, time has become the road's worst enemy.
The nonprofit National Historic Route 66 Federation in Lake Arrowhead, Calif., estimates at least 3,000 motels along the route are in various states of repair or disrepair.
Route 66, immortalized in John Steinbeck's 1939 novel "The Grapes of Wrath" and crooner Nat King Cole's catchy tune, debuted in 1926, instantly becoming a slice of Americana.
The road meant steady work for scores of unemployed men who built it in the 1930s; an avenue for thousands of Okies who migrated west to escape the Dust Bowl and a post-World War II playground for millions of Americans looking to roam in the 1950s and '60s.
With the interstate came the Holiday Inns, chain gas stations and drive-thrus, popping up overnight. Neon and quirky were on the outs. Pre-fab and fast were in.
The business model for the motels became outdated, too. How was a place built in the 1920s to accommodate 11 to 20 patrons to compete with a big-box motel that could cram 10 times more customers in?
By 1984, the interstate had bypassed the last bit of 66 in Arizona, ending America's romance with the iconic highway.
The handful of motels that survived fight a stigma they are no-tell motels, offering no-frills accommodations.
"Motels are such a part of our recent history that it's often hard for people to view them as historically significant," says Kaisa Barthuli, with the Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program in Santa Fe, N.M.
To drum up support for these forgotten properties, preservationists in Oklahoma recently added Route 66 motels to a list of most endangered historic places.
"People say, 'it's a nice sign, but I would never stay there,'" says Jim Gabbert, an architectural historian with the Oklahoma Historical Society. "There are dozens of old motels ... fighting the perception that these are rat traps."
Traveling west from the Riviera Courts, the Chelsea Motel about 45 miles down the road seems in worse shape.
A couple beat-up cars are parked on the grass in front of the wood-frame structure. Dandelions and shards of glass carpet the courtyard. In Room No. 6, there is noise from a TV or radio and a couple bottles of shampoo on the window sill, but nobody answers the door.
Suddenly, John Hall (news, bio, voting record) pops out from behind the building. He is tall, gray-haired and shirtless, and could pass for a tattooed department store Santa Claus.
The 62-year-old owns the motel with his wife, a pack rat who uses most of its rooms as storage and wants to sell the place to build an Indian tobacco shop.
The motel was built around 1935 to cater to the traffic moving west. By the 1970s, it was headed downhill.
Holding on to a piece of history isn't in the Halls' blood, even though it's in their backyard. Restoring it would cost tens of thousands of dollars.
"I hope we sell the whole place and move into the country," he says.
There is some magic left in this town.
A couple blocks from the Halls' place, Frank and Trudy Jugler opened the Chelsea Motor Inn, a six-room, Route 66 tribute motel. They have plans to put up teepees where guests can camp out, and they are restoring an adjoining 1890s house as a bed and breakfast.
In keeping with the traveling circus atmosphere so vital to luring tourists along Route 66 in the old days, the Juglers own a pet bison that roams in the backyard. It's named, aptly, Chelsea.
"We thought, man, it would be cool to be sitting on a chair in front of a motel on Route 66," says Frank Jugler, a fast-talking, 48-year-old Maryland native.
Like the Juglers, some folks are slowly reclaiming the few miles of Route 66 history that run through their city limits.
In Flagstaff, Ariz., residents are taking advantage of a facade improvement program that helps Route 66 building owners restore their neon signs. In Albuquerque, N.M., the city bought the historic De Anza Motor Lodge several years ago and recently selected a developer to restore the landmark as an upscale Route 66 destination.
A few places are getting by on America's Main Street.
Elm's Motel in Claremore, 30 miles west of Chelsea, is a series of modest yellow and brown cottages, with ivy creeping along the sides. Garages used to be attached to each cottage, but proprietors figured they could squeeze another room in and they were yanked.
"There's not that many old places left in Claremore," laments owner Tommy Copp, 68, who bought the place about 30 years ago. "They're pretty much gone by the wayside. That's called progress."
The story becomes sadder with each mile marker.
Canute, a dusty town of 500 or so about 105 miles west of Oklahoma City, hides a Route 66 landmark in the Cotton Boll Motel. With its classic red, white and green neon sign shaped like a tuft of cotton, the Boll is one of the most photographed along the route.
Its owner, Pat Webb, checked into the 16-room building in the mid-1990s and never left.
The 55-year-old oil field pipe inspector turned part of it into his private home and playground for his grandchildren. But he has no plans to reopen the place to the public. Liability insurance alone would eat up profits, he figures.
"I just leave the sign up so people can take pictures," he says with a shrug.
Forty more miles west, and another unhappy ending.
When 62-year-old retiree Klaus Battenfeld bought the Westwinds Motel 12 years ago, he didn't think fixing it up would turn into such a hassle. But the adobe-style structure in Erick, a town of 1,000 located near the Texas border, proved too much work.
It needs a new roof, electric, air conditioning.
He is selling the overgrown property, where tumbleweeds blow across the courtyard like in some Wild West movie. Then, back to Germany.
"It's written in the big book, maybe it's not designed for me to stay here for the rest of my life," Battenfeld says in a thick German accent.
Retirement is on hold. There was a detour on Route 66.
Didn’t the movie Cars have this as one of its main plot points? The forgotten town which began its decline with the construction of the Interstate?
Here is a fabulous drive with GREAT pics along the road. Being from California I am more familiar with the Amboy, Needles section as that was our back way to Vegas and Laughlin. But I have been along the Arizona and New Mexico part of the road, what there is left anyway.
http://www.rwc.uc.edu/koehler/rt66icons.html
Ping to above post, you may want to check it out for your tard group trip to Az. :)
Another great site with even better pictures. Now I just want to get out there on the road............
http://ushighway66.com/mainframe.htm
I’m a history buff and love Burma Shave signs.
Read the whole page! :-)
Then I come back, and you’ve posted another one. lol...
That last link has 1000’s of pics, I had to take a break. Whew, I feel as though I’ve been driving all day.
I started in Ca and am working my way backwards. :)
Phillips 66 - named after the route.
Back in Triplette, NC (in the Blue Ridge where my Dad, his family, and our family grew up) Stewart Simmons had a country store. At that tore was a gas hand operated gas pump with a round glass jar at the top. The operator would pump the level to fill the (I think it was one gallon with graduated marks on it)glass jar with gas. Then a button on the nozzle was pressed and a bell would ding and as the gas emptied from the jar, through the hose into a can or car, or tractor. Stewart later converted it to sell kerosene. Wish I had that pump now. Wow. If you ever watch the old B&W re-runs of the Andy Griffith show, Andy mentions going to see Stewart (’run up to Triplette) to get one of his hams for Thanksgiving. Yes, Stewart was real and the 2 really knew each other for years.
I always had wondered about that. Thanks for the tidbit.,P. Wish I could roll time back some to say, May 1958, be 20 yrs old about at that time, and drive the entire distance with my sweetie in a ‘56 T-Bird to “Get My Kicks on Route 66!”
Interesting!
Thanks for the ping.
I love to live in the past!
Thanks for the story.
I agree those kind of places are still around in *some* states. Maine is one. My family is from ME, we still go there every summer to our camp on the lake. And we get off on Rt1 and do some scenic driving (nice change from 95!) But most of those places have disappeared from around here. Even in Sturbridge, I remember a store that was shaped like a wedge of cheese, don’t think it’s there anymore (replaced by Friendlys or Cracker Barrel or Starbucks?) We used to have places like that where I live, huge dairy queens or hut shaped stores or statues outside of 10 room mom and pop hotels- statues which seemingly have no connection with anything, lol. Even a 15 foot concrete dragon from a local store was taken down, a huge totem pole from another gone...all the interesting little theme places replaced around here. It’s sad.
I wish I could have traveled Rt55 in its heyday. I’ve seen pictures (concrete wigwams, cows, businesses in train cars..) Unfortunately, by the time I was born, the big days had passed and now there’s not much there.
PS People around here are amazed when I tell them every McD’s sells lobster rolls up there! And strawberry-rhubarb pie along with GrapeNuts pudding at every little roadside restaurant!
Oh fer cryin’ out loud....Rt66! Wish I could have traveled Rt66 in its heyday!
Hey ktscarlett, I grew up in Sturbridge and remember the cheese wheel store. It was right next door to a greasy spoon diner called Mandeville’s. We used to call the diner “Slime’s”, and it was THE place to go after Friday night dances at the Sturbridge Youth Center.
I grew up in Downey, Calif. home of one of the two original McDonald’s.
Living in the past is one thing, but don’t ever buy a 100 yo house. The romance is long gone, and so is my money!
Ok, maybe you’ll remember this too - I think it was on the other side of the turnpike - a small motel that had a huge concrete statue of Neptune looking at a mermaid that was lying on an open scallop-y type shell. The shell was being carried by fish, I believe. They had an outdoor pool and it seems as though the statue was near the pool - we passed it walking back and forth from the room to the pool. My mom says she vaguely remembers it but I remember it distinctly. I was fascinated with that statue!
I also remember that motel because it was where I left my glass flowers (tucked under the bed) when we checked out, lol. There was a store, seems as though it was near the cheese wheel (maybe it *was* the cheesewheel?) that sold little things like my glass flowers on wire stems, and those birds that sat on the edge of a glass of water and dunked into it. I *loved* those birds then! LOL, the things kids remember. I was so upset when I discovered I’d forgotten my glass flowers...but we were 50 miles up the turnpike and my dad wasn’t turning around!
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