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The business model for the motels became outdated, too.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.
Actually, about 7 years ago, Congress allocated a pile of money for historical preservation along the remnants of old Route 66. I think it was $80 million or so?
We don’t necessarily need direct government subsidies to maintain these quirky and historic structures.....we should be giving the owners a break on their real estate taxes and perhaps state income taxes if they preserve their respective properties for future generations.
Besides, tourism generates a lot of money.....it’s one
of America’s biggest “industries”!
I agree. But if people don’t want to use them, then what is the option? Recently, my husband and I stayed in a family-owned motel built in the 1930s along what was then a major travel road. It had been beautifully maintained and had undergone renovations through the years to keep it up-to-date. We always look for these gems if we can find them. Sometimes you can’t. But if there’s not people out there like us, then there’s no other choice but for them to die.
The Smithsonian has a chunk of Route 66 pavement.
We just did a I-40/I-10 coast-coast trip last summer and we specifically avoided the interstates whenever possible. While I-40 is unavoidable between OK & CA, we still took time to pop off onto old sections of US 66.
It is truly a sight to behold witnessing the various ghost towns along the route. Even more 'substantial' towns like Winslow AZ have a lonely, wistful, windswept presence.
We almost stayed at the WigWam (in Holbrook AZ), but opted for the HolidyInn Express instead because it was just too broken down. The old gas stations & hotels are fun to look at as you cruise by, but then it's time to hit the highway.
By the time you cross the Miss however, it's easy to get around between smaller towns on either old US highways or state highways. That's the way to do it if you want to eat & stay local. If you're just trying to get from one place to another on the interstate, you might as well fly.
I feel so blessed that I was able to do the bulk of my road trips in the Sixties and Seventies when life on the road was much more relaxed and way more of an adventure.All the little towns with their unique flavors and each bend in the road bringing on a new mystery.
AND,on top of that,gas was 30 cents a gallon,a motel was six or seven dollars and many campgrounds were absolutely free.
Actually, my post said ‘Travel and Tourism maps’. Those are maps produced by the tourism industry. And the maps you referred to from the airports to Disneyland are the type I’m speaking up. The tourism industry produce all type of variations of those.
America...always reaching for the brass ring...
Isn’t that the stretch with the “Nude Breakfast” signs?
Oh, I didn't know travel maps didn't show detail and are not produced by companies such as Rand Mcnally, Thomas Brothers etc.
Thanks for that information.
Thanks for the pics, I feel like I just took a mini vacation. :)
Highly evocative of the dying Route 66 scene.
Starred Marianne Sägebrecht (Adlon's favorite actress), CCH Pounder, and Jack Palance.
Thanks for posting those great pictures!
You’re very welcome. All courtesy of Google. ;-)
This is a group dedicated to getting the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) to recommission US Highway 66. You need to get all eight State Highway departmentds to sign on to the deal, and then re-sign it.
It would be a good thing to do and would encourage tourism in the eight states.
http://www.bringbackroute66.com/
Route 66 at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_66
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Highway_system
Being a Road Geek I’d like them to bring back US 99 too and US 25 (Dixie Highway) north of Cincinnati.
I remember the gas pumps that were round, and you could see the gas. The gas was called Ethel and something else that I can’t remember.
There are still a few of ‘em...3 years ago somewhere along I-40 (Route 66) we stopped, gassed up and bought a bunch of pecan logs.
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