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The business model for the motels became outdated, too.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.
Funny - my house is 98 years old and we’ve had less problems with it than my mother’s newly constructed townhouse! I wouldn’t trade my lovely Gothic farmhouse home for any of the new houses around here.
I tell her my walls are constructed with 2x4s that actually measure 2x4, lathe and plaster and hers are made out of tissue paper and spit.
Route 20 was sort of like Route 66 on a smaller scale. It was THE main east-west road from Boston all the way across Massachusetts as far as Illiniois, IIRC.
It’s true about those real 2x4’s. Try putting a nail in one without drilling a pilot hole.
I love my house, but the uneven floors drive me crazy. We are working on them one room at a time.
My husband has recently gotten cancer, so it has put a stop on the refurbishing.
Inspectorette- Would have been in the mid-70s. I was born in 1966, probably was about 8 or 9 when we stayed there. That name does sound familiar. I think there was a huge Italian restaurant somewhere close to it. At least it seemed huge to me at the time! I remember really good spaghetti and meatballs there.
Coldwater-Very sorry to hear about your husband. We’re doing the same thing, one room at a time, but ours isn’t major work, just painting, and putting up some new drywall and insulation. The previous owners (16 years ago) put up paneling in most of the house and we started noticing weird bulges on the bottom of the walls. When we took it down, we discovered that a lot of the plaster between the lathes had fallen down behind the paneling! Also on some of the walls underneath, we discovered 4 layers of wallpaper, some quite beautiful patterns, but in terrible shape. Not restorable, unfortunately.
We’ve only got one ‘bump’ in our floors, but it’s right at the bottom of the stairs and close to the front door. I can live with the bump but it’s developed a squeak that is getting louder and louder. Good thing is, no one (ahem..teenagers) could sneak in or out at night!
I enjoyed your post.
Regarding lobster rolls, the ones from the Mom and Pop eateries are much better than the lobster rolls from McDonalds.
You are so right about Route 1. It’s very scenic and hugs the Maine Coast, winding through picturesque, historic towns in the process. The Maine Turnpike is much faster, but it goes through mostly miles and miles of woods....not much to see from a tourism point of view.
Let’s not compare the Washington Monument, the Statue of Liberty,and The Liberty Bell to a bunch of old motels.
Very cool.
Makes you realize how temporary man’s “accomplishments” really are.
Here,here. One of the fastest ways to date someone is to mention those signs which every traveler of those days, especially kids, loved to read.
Re lobster rolls, I agree with you. I never get them there. Everyone here is just fascinated that they’re even sold at McD’s! People here also thinks it’s cool that the McD’s in Freeport is in an actual old house, as opposed to the typical concrete McD building.
We took my son’s friend with us a couple of years ago. At first, he thought the ME turnpike & 95 were pretty neat. Totally different from the landscape in DE. A few hours later, he’s asking “Is there anything else but trees?” We said no, not really. Our camp is in northern Aroostook (aka THE County) so he got to see hours of trees, lol. But he still loved it.
“In any event Route 66 will still be there if the old motels die.”
I disagree. In CT there are large section of 66 which was the alternate to Route 6. These sections are being renumbered because of interstate growth. Numbers like I-691 and Route 322 exist. These 2 roads parallel each other and the original Route 66 lost its number to 322. 66 is no more.
BUMP
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