Reinvented

REINVENTED

By Holly Riddle Photographs by Efren Lopez/Route66Images

The charming Ozark sandstone cottages of the Rockwood Motor Court might catch the eye of travelers making their way through Springfield, Missouri, on old Route 66. Their curiosity piqued, they might spot motorcycles or vintage cars in the parking lot, or the 1950s-reminiscent colorful red patio furniture out front, or a group of happy guests on the light-strung patio. But what they won’t see are the many owners that have claimed this iconic property, the rough road that it endured to make it to the 21st Century, or the passionate owner behind its current revitalization.

Open Arms

Even before Route 66 came to town in 1929, Springfield was a bustling hub of transportation. An industrialized railroad town, the county seat, and the half-way point between St. Louis and Tulsa, Springfield was a busy city in the first half of the 20th Century. Speak with many Springfield natives and you’ll quickly realize that they’re still pretty proud of the city’s status as the birthplace of Route 66, regardless of the fact that the route didn’t necessarily revolutionize or save the city from economic woes. But when travelers on Route 66 first made their way through town, Springfield was ready to welcome them with open arms (something that still hasn’t changed today). As such, the town was home to its fair share of motor courts.

“[Motor courts] were one-stop shops. They had a place to eat. You could get gas there. Everything was available, so when travelers stopped overnight, they could get everything they needed in one spot,” said John Sellars, Executive Director of Springfield’s History Museum on the Square. “There were a significant number of them through this area, on Route 66… and the Rockwood is a prime example of that type of motel.”

A Long Way to Go

When Route 66 was commissioned in 1926, Deverne Ruckman saw an opportunity on the new highway. He built a gas station, his family home, and a motor court, with its series of private cottages for guests, all in one spot. The business was a true motor court of the era and one of the first in Springfield, with single-car garages attached to each room and wood lap siding that gave the cottages a rustic, homey feel. However, unlike many Route 66-inspired entrepreneurs, Ruckman did not see immediate nor resounding success for his efforts. What is now the Rockwood Motor Court would be bought and sold over and over again throughout its earliest days.

Built in 1929, the Rockwood had new ownership on a nearyearly basis, for about the next decade — in 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1937, 1938, and 1939. In 1940, the property changed hands once more, as well as names, when it was purchased by Carl P. Klein and became known as the Carl P. Klein Tourist Camp. In 1941, it became O.K. Cabins, a name that lasted through 1946. Then, the property became the White Haven Motor Court, and in 1948, it finally became the Rockwood Motor Court and Lee’s Drive-in Cafe. Bud and Queenie Koch owned the property for the longest stretch of its history, from the 1950s through the 1970s. However, as Route 66 was decommissioned in 1985, traveler traffic dried up, and motor courts in general — not just the Rockwood — spiraled into decay, quietly being used for weekly and then monthly tenants.

“After Route 66 was decommissioned in 1985, people didn’t drive by [the motel],” says David Eslick, a Route 66 Association of Missouri board member who currently lives in Springfield. “They didn’t really think about staying in a little motel. If you were to interview 50 people that started traveling I-44, Route 66 wasn’t on their minds. You know, Route 66, it didn’t die, but it was in the nursing home.”

In the 1980s, though, the Rockwood looked quite different from the Rockwood of its heyday. The property’s original wood lap siding was covered in the 1940s with the sandstone rock that guests still see today. The previous Shell filling station was transformed into the restaurant space in the 1940s as well. The cottages’ attached garages were converted into rooms during the Kochs’ tenure, further pushing the property toward its current appearance. The restaurant became known as Ginny Lee’s, named after one of the later owners and operated by Ginny Lee’s daughter, Willa Naugle, after her retirement. In the mid-1990s, lightning struck and set fire to the restaurant’s second floor and attic, requiring a rebuild.

At the Rockwood, Ginny Lee’s was in operation for over a decade, before the restaurant adopted a new name in 2009, the Route 66 Cafe, under the new ownership of Doug Anderson, who advertised the eatery as having the best biscuits and gravy west of the Mississippi. In more recent history, Jason Russell leased the space from Anderson and turned the restaurant into Tubby’s Diner, which remained in business for about five or six years, until, according to the next owner, Russell “just walked away and locked the doors” in 2017.

Finally, Some Direction

The property sat empty until Springfield resident Dannie Wright drove by the property, spotted her friend Anderson outside, and decided to stop by.

“I love the property. It’s so cute with the little cottages in the back. So one day, when I was passing by, [Anderson] was

Phyllis Ferguson relaxing at her Rockwood Court.

there boarding up a window, so I stopped. I got out and was telling him, ‘I love this place.’ It was terrible. It was so run down. The last person there had really trashed it. He said, ‘Well, I’ll sell it to you. You wanna buy it?’ I just kind of laughed at him.”

But in 2018, that’s exactly what Wright did. After several months of discussions, an agreement was reached, and Wright purchased the property and opened Bigfoot Subs in the property’s restaurant space. She completed what she calls a “massive, massive” amount of work to the space, restoring the Rockwood to a semblance of its former glory. Still, the cottages weren’t yet returned to their roles as overnight lodging, with month-to-month tenants still in place.

Then, Wright met Phyllis Ferguson.

“She loved the property and wanted to support us. She helped me a lot, because her family has been in the restaurant business for a long time. We became good friends and, once she saw everything we had done to clean the place up, she was interested in the [property]. She started leasing the cottages from me, because I couldn’t afford to do anything with them and they needed a lot of work,” said Wright.

At the time, Ferguson was, and still is, the chief operating officer for Mexican Villa Food Products and a chain of Mexican restaurants in Springfield. No stranger to the hospitality business, her family’s brand includes six locations in Springfield, one in the Ozarks, and a factory. She’s lived in Springfield since 1974 and traveled Route 66 in her infancy, when her parents would drive from St. Louis to visit family along the highway.

Involved in local politics as a councilwoman and mayor pro tem, Ferguson would often stop by the Rockwood property to see how Wright was doing and how she could help. To her, it was no big deal. She was simply, as she puts it, “looking out for her zone.” When she first stopped by Wright’s Bigfoot Subs restaurant, she noticed that the motor court itself was in poor condition, with what she calls “a fairly rough crowd” inhabiting the cottages.

“I decided that [the motor court] was going to go one direction or the other, and if I could help, it was going to go in the right direction,” said Ferguson.

And so, in the summer of 2019, Ferguson started the renovations, leasing the property from Wright with an option to buy.

“We put new roofs on all of the cottages — new doors, new windows, HVAC, new flooring. We kept as much of the original bathrooms as we could. It was pretty major, with all new electrical, new water lines to half of the cottages,” said Ferguson. “The Rockwood has continuously been open

Phyllis Ferguson with husband Tim Phillips.

and operated, and then we closed it briefly for seven months while we did this major restoration.”

But Ferguson only worked on the property for about ten months before purchasing the Rockwood from Wright. When the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020, restaurants all over Springfield suffered a tremendous blow — Bigfoot Subs among them — so Wright decided to semi-retire, a decision that she admits was best for the Rockwood in the long run.

“[Ferguson] has done an incredible job with it. She had deeper pockets than me, for sure. Everything that I did, we did it on a shoestring,” Wright explained. “It was a ton of work and a lot of sweat equity and help, but she was able to step in and take care of the larger issues that needed much deeper pockets than mine, so I’m really proud and glad that she has it.”

While the pandemic meant a somewhat fortuitous departure for Wright, it also allowed Ferguson the time she needed to finish guest rooms and, as she puts it, “get her sea legs,” so that when the Rockwood fully reopened as travel likewise opened up, she and the Rockwood both were in a better position to welcome guests.

The Future Looks Bright

Once upon a time mom-and-pop motels dominated Route 66, with large and small venues and gimmicks of all kinds to pull people off the road. However, their numbers slowly diminished over time. This reality was part of the reason why Ferguson feels such a passion for the Rockwood’s future.

“The motor court had a lot of potential. You just had to look at it, to know what it had looked like and then to realize what it could look like with time, work, money and commitment,” she said.

It’s a sentiment that Wright shares. “I had the vision of what it could be if somebody just cared about it — and it’s such a unique property. It just screams history. Just looking at it throws you back to a time that was different. There’s not many of them left and I felt really good about trying to salvage it.”

But it wasn’t just Route 66 that was filled with motor courts. On a smaller scale, it was the rest of the City of Springfield, too, that was jam-packed with tourist courts. According to David Eslick, in 1930, there were 19 motor courts in Springfield. By 1950, there were 29, and in 1962, there were 42. Today, most have been sadly lost to time. John Sellars estimated that there are fewer than 20 or 25 of these historic properties left today, and only a few of them are geared to attract discerning travelers.

Some of those that remain have been fortunate enough to land in the hands of valiant stewards, such as Ferguson, but others haven’t been quite so lucky. Some, despite good guardianship, were simply misfortunate enough to exist in neighborhoods that experienced economic downturns that dragged the motor courts down with them.

Finding “Something Authentic” at the Rockwood

Today, the Rockwood is an homage to the golden age of the automobile and to tourist cabins of a bygone era. Each room boasts a different theme hearkening back to Route 66’s heyday.

Ferguson took the original filling station footprint back to its 420 square feet, turning it into a small, bookable studio space with a queen bed, two twin beds, a living room area, a kitchenette, and a full bath. It has a Shell gas station theme with a red-and-yellow color palette. It is one of her most popular rooms.

The hotelier life seems to fit Ferguson well and she has found a passion for hospitality.

“That’s the best part of a motor court, the guests that you have. They come out, they talk. It doesn’t make any difference how diverse they are in terms of geography or their age or any demographic,” Ferguson explains. “It seems like, on that patio, they’re just people having a good time and relaxing at the Rockwood, and I love that. The doors are wide open. People are traveling. We’ve been busy, busy, busy. We’re happy.”

A busy vintage motor court, a happy host, and contented guests enjoying themselves — it’s the perfect picture. Although that was likely the intention of every motor court owner back in the earlier days of motoring across the country, decades of decline spelled doom for many courts and left the rest in a sad state of affairs. This motor court is one of the lucky ones — rescued and revived by the passion of its new owner. Its Ozark charm and spanking new shine will catch your eye, too.

THE FORMOSA CAFE

Not far from the Santa Monica terminus of Route 66 in trendy West Hollywood, California, sits a little 1920s diner that has captured the imaginations of millions for close to a century. Tucked across the street from what was originally the Samuel Goldwyn Films studio, and only ten minutes from the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Formosa Cafe has seen multitudes of people come through its doors. When it opened in 1925 as the Red Post Café, the Formosa Cafe was little more than a modest eatery run by ex-prize-fighter Jimmy Bernstein. But in 1945, when he hired a new head chef named Lem Quon, business began to change. Bernstein gave Quon free reign of the décor and menu, changed the name to the Formosa Cafe, and birthed what was to become one of the most famous restaurants in Los Angeles.

Throughout its storied history, celebrities like Humphrey Bogart, James Dean, and Frank Sinatra frequented the place. Even famed gangster Bugsy Seigel had his own booth. The café reached its height in the ‘50s, and later in the ‘70s and ‘80s became a go-to spot for rock stars and a younger celebrity crowd — think Johnny Depp and Christian Slater. But fame isn’t everything, and even the most popular places can nearly disappear.

“Hollywood is one of those places that is always looking towards the new,” said Bobby Green, one of the co-owners of the Formosa. “So many celebrities had memories of being there, but that wasn’t enough to keep it going. The things that made the Formosa special were slowly disappearing.”

Going into the 1990s, Warner Bros., who had bought the nearby film studio in the ‘80s, tried to buy out the property and turn it into a parking lot. Thanks to protestors and even a message from U2’s Bono, the café was saved for another few years. But Quon, now the sole owner, died only two years later, and it quickly began to decline. For years, Quon’s grandson, Vince Jung, struggled to keep the original charm of the place, but was unable to without serious help.

That help came in the form of the 1933 Group, a design firm that owns many of LA’s most famous and historic bars with the purpose of recreating early American aesthetics through design and cocktails. The Group now owns the bar, and Bobby Green was the lead designer for the $2.5 million renovation that recreated and modernized the vibe of the original 1950s Formosa.

“For me personally, it was hugely important to continue the original legacy of the restaurant, because it harkened back to my own memories of the place,” said Green. “The Formosa’s one of those places that ends up being a huge multi-generational fan club of people who remember it. You can bridge the gap between young and old because people come from all over the world to feel some connection with the movies that they know and grew up with, and those places are so few and far between these days.”

After two years, the Formosa Cafe reopened its doors in 2018. The interior is strikingly red, with wallpaper designed by Green himself that incorporates and combines designs that have been used in the café for decades. The floor is elegantly tiled with the same terrazzo found on Hollywood Boulevard and the Walk of Fame, accompanied by beautiful brass trim inlays in unique Chinese knot designs. The booths, vintage to the café, have been restored, and famous celebrity headshots once again line the walls. “The Formosa is this treasure of a lot of Angelenos, and they really take this sense of ownership of the places they hang out, especially those that represent old Hollywood. LA was shaped by Hollywood and vice versa, but we’re not very good at preserving old Hollywood. We’re constantly looking towards the future and making things new, so the Formosa sort of became a mini museum to the city’s history, because there just wasn’t anything of the sort until recently.”

The effort that Green and his team put into restoring the café seems to have been a success. It has the charm of the original café, but the sophistication that is part of many of the 1933 Group’s businesses. A modernized menu incorporates original recipes with a twist and continues to draw patrons from all over the world, and from all walks of life. However, the Formosa truly stands as a reminder of the faded world of old Hollywood, and how one visionary took his dreams and brought them to center stage.

A GRAVEYARD IN THE DESERT

In the middle of the Mojave Desert, thousands of commercial jets sit still and silent in the shifting sand. Many have wings torn from their sides and silver exteriors peeled away. This ghostly fleet is embalmed and half-disemboweled. For many Boeing 747s and fourengine cruisers, the stretch of desert on the edge of the Mojave Air and Space Port serves as a final resting ground. Newer aircrafts use the boneyard as a stopover. These giants, which will eventually return to the skies, appear to be paused in mid-motion.

Aviation journalist Nicholas A. Veronico has been fascinated by the life cycle of airplanes since he was a child. In 1970, Nicholas’ father brought him and his brother to the California 1000 Unlimited Air Race. They waited in line for hot dogs and watched the P-51 Mustangs sailing between pit stops. As jets soared past, Nicholas found himself transfixed by the scrapped airliners gleaming motionless at the center of this flurry of wings.

“It was so weird to see airplanes going by at 400 miles an hour while there were airplanes with their engines removed, some sitting on the ground, that were once airliners,” Nicholas said.

The eerie sight inspired Nicholas to seek out aircraft wrecks. Today, he is the author of dozens of books on aviation and regularly visits the Mojave and other boneyards around the country. He often buys scrap. His most recent finds at the Mojave are some airliner seats and a drink cart that now holds barbecuing supplies. Nicholas is part of a group of admirers and collectors for whom the storage area holds a powerful fascination.

“There’s this huge cadre of people that collect airliner cockpits or airliner interiors,” Nicholas said. “They’re always out there prowling to see what can be bought or sold.”

Sometimes, Nicholas sells scrap to museums and helps make plane restorations as original as possible. Others have a second life on the silver screen. Doug Scroggins of Scroggins Aviation, Mock-Ups, and Special Effects buys and stores scrapped planes at the Mojave. One of his airliners was used in the 2016 film Sully with a dunk tank and green screen. The older planes might have their aluminum stripped and poured back into American manufacturing. The parts are used to make cars, refrigerators, and beer cans.

Between uses, the silvered carcasses of airliners are preserved like Ancient Egyptian sarcophagi. Engines are removed and carefully stored. Fluids like gasoline are drained from the body of the plane. Inert gas is pumped into its tanks to expel lingering fuel vapors. The windows are sealed shut like so many blinkered eyes. If the entrances are not covered with tight, reflective material, birds will find their way into the bones of the airplane and nest. A curtain of shimmering heat from the desert sun offers the lifeless aircraft another layer of protection.

The dormant jets are parked in the shadow of the next chapter in commercial flight. Just beyond the boneyard, experimental spacecraft race across the open sky. Since the 1990s, the remote, arid conditions of the Mojave Desert have made the Air and Space Port a hub for aerospace engineering. Scientists Paul Allen and Burt Rutan designed AirSpaceOne, an air-launched rocket, and the aircraft White Knight that carried it, on these grounds. Virgin Galactic has made major inroads toward commercial space travel here. It might not be long before families circle the Earth’s orbit like they boarded planes, dressed to the nines and eagerly peering out the windows, in the 1930s and ‘40s.

The sea of shining planes, rising out of the desert like a mirage, has a spellbinding effect on visitors. Looking out on the shells of Boeings, Lockheeds, and Airbuses, the viewer might feel like an explorer stumbling on an ancient wreck. The haunting stillness of silver bodies baking in the sun is a reminder that airplanes have life cycles. They are created at a specific moment, their purpose shifts over time, and, eventually, they reach obsolescence. Aircraft are retired and find new life through human ingenuity. Visitors exploring the Air and Space Port and adjoining boneyard enter into a space between the past and future. They will find the earthbound aircraft possess a beauty that is uniquely unearthly.