re: Pictures from days gone by....

100 Years of the Motel - Neon Signs, Swimming Pools and American Dreams

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The motel might seem like an ageless fixture of the American landscape, but in fact, this roadside mainstay didn’t exist before Dec. 12, 1925.

That’s when Arthur and Alfred Heineman, two brothers with a successful Southern California architecture practice, opened the Milestone Mo-Tel, the first “motor hotel,” in San Luis Obispo, roughly halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

At the time, motorists had limited options. Their dust-covered clothes hardly suited the highbrow standards of most hotels, and parking in cities could be challenging. So many drivers stayed in autocamps, roadside resting places that sometimes offered basics like firewood and communal bathrooms, pitching tents off their running boards and cooking underneath the stars.

In contrast, the brand-new Milestone featured novel comforts like hot showers and private garages. “There were orange trees in front of every door,” said Thomas Kessler, the executive director of the History Center of San Luis Obispo County, adding, “The idea of being able to reach out and pick an orange from out your window — you know, they talk about that in ‘The Grapes of Wrath.’ It’s such a concept of the American dream.”

Like those trees, motels blossomed, giving a century’s worth of asphalt explorers a place to park their cars, lay their heads and contemplate what’s down the road, and fulfilling a promise perhaps best expressed in the words of those once-ubiquitous ads for Motel 6:
“We’ll leave the light on for you.”

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The first official motel, the Milestone Mo-Tel (later renamed the Motel Inn) opened on Dec. 12, 1925, in San Luis Obispo, Calif.



1929 - Edgar Lee Torrance opens the original Alamo Plaza in East Waco, Texas. With a facade designed to look like the Alamo, it will become the one of the first major motel chains in the country.

This one was in Gulfport. Anyone remember it?



1933
The first Wigwam Village opens in Horse Cave, Ky., featuring a clutch of tepees marked with distinctive zigzag stripes. A notable example of programmatic architecture, in which the building itself advertises the property, it eventually grows to become a chain of seven motels in six states - one was in NO. Three locations remain open today: in Cave City, Ky.; Holbrook, Ariz.; and San Bernardino, Calif

St. Louis

Check out the drilling rigs just off the main road.

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Jack Palance and 18 year old Sharon Tate on the set of Barrabas (1961), in which she was an extra

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She also had a few guest appearances on "The Beverly Hillbillies" playing a bank secretary named Janet. Lovely young lady gone way too soon thanks to Manson and his murderous bunch.

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Check out the drilling rigs just off the main road

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I see someone getting a ticket…

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Jack Palance

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That's what I call a real jaw line.

VFW marbles tournament