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The business model for the motels became outdated, too.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.
I agree, government planning will not improve anything.
In any event Route 66 will still be there if the old motels die. If there is a good economic reason for new motels, the free market will move in.
Some of them are cool buildings and its a real shame to see them disappear and get replaced with identical chain motels. A piece of America vanishing. Just like so many downtowns have been killed by Interstates which bring a boring sameness to travel. The same few restaurants. The same couple chain stores. The same few hotels. Identical looking gas stations. I remember when travel used to be a lot more interesting than it is in todays more plain vanilla and standardized America.
As I tell my kids, we can’t keep everything.
Same Sh+t, different town. Diversity my eye. With the advent of TV, even accents in speech are disappearing.
ping
“Same Sh+t, different town. Diversity my eye. With the advent of TV, even accents in speech are disappearing.”
Indeed and its really boring to have a giant country with an increasingly universal culture and the same handful of stores everywhere. I drove east to west a couple years ago on the interstate helping my kid move and it was dull as dirt. You couldn’t tell whether you were in Kansas, California, or North Carolina. Every exit felt about the same. I did the same trip before the interstate spanned the whole way and it was substantially more interesting. We are becoming a more boring and generically antiseptic place to live.
I miss those Stucky’s peacan candy and gasoline stops. An entire industry outsourced to China...
There is a great Rt. 66 restaurant in Tulsa.
http://grouper.com/video/MediaDetails.aspx?id=1833548&ml=t%3d1%26fx%3d
Nat King Cole-Route 66
ping
Some of my favorites
Bus I-85 from Greensboro NC to Lexington NC is the old highway. Lots of old motels
360 from Roanoke Va to Richmond Va. Classic old highway.
US 29 from Greensboro north
US 17 along the NC coast
“US 17 along the NC coast”
17 is nice further south too. The ol’ Atlantic Coast Highway
In Pennsylvania, Rte. 30 is the "Old Pennsylvania Pike," and essentially grew from the first horse trails between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Whereas the "New" PA Turnpike (I76) goes through the mountain, Rte. 30 goes up, over and around the mountains, with many an inn, tavern or hotel along the way. I use to drive it frequently, but it's been a few years since I've been back that way...hope it is spared the same fate as Rte 66....
If you get the opportunity to drive US 27 from Tallahassee (I-10) south to Tampa, I say do it. This is an old part of Florida that most people have no clue exists — even many that live in Florida.
That would be cool to do. We are doing US360 this week to take the kids to Williamsburg
The quirky, Mom and Pop establishments with local flavor and culture are still there, you just have to look harder for them; they’re not on the Interstate, but the local roads in each community.
I live in Maine, and while we have no shortage of McDonald’s, Burger Kings, Pizza Huts, Kentucky Fried Chickens, Starbucks and WalMarts, we also have Mom and Pop restaurants with giant, fake lobsters outside the front door, Jaspers Restaurant and Motel in Ellsworth, Maine with lobster 19 ways; quirky ice cream stands who sell blueberry cheesecake ice cream AND fried clams, along with scores of other items; lobster rolls; seaside eateries in coastal lobstering towns that have changed little in a hundred years, etc.
The same is true about the rest of the country.....you just have to look harder for these quirky establishments of local flavor.....look beyond the interstates and their national chains.
PS: In Bar Harbor, Maine, there is a restaurant called the Route 66 Cafe. It’s quite a distance from where Route 66 begins, on Michigan Avenue in Chicago!
How about US 301 from Delaware to FL. Used this road many times B4 I 95 and I77.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.