Whether it’s classic cars, old fashioned burgers or a museum that brings history to life, you can relive the glory days of Route 66 in its birthplace. We love our city and know the best places to eat, drink and play. Get your kicks at the Birthplace of Route 66 Festival, August 10–12, 2023.
When exploring Route 66, Oklahoma City is a must-see destination. OKC’s vibrant districts welcome visitors into their diverse local restaurants and shops. Our classic neon signs evoke the nostalgia of the Mother Road and our newly renovated state capitol includes an engaging public art collection that celebrates Oklahoma's history and people.
Start your journey at VisitOKC.com.
OklahomaCapitolBuilding
Uptown23rdDistrict
PaseoArtsDistrict
Discover Springfield, Illinois - one of the most iconic stops on historic Route 66. The road comes through our “Living Legends & Landmarks” Explorer Passport with 14 stops to engage all of your senses! Plan your road trip, meet the legends face-to-face, marvel at the landmarks, snap some pics, and create your own Route 66 memories!
Tulsa is simply a must for any Route 66 trek. Once known as “The Oil Capital of the World,” T-Town is recognized today for countless unique attributes such as a skyline brimming with cherished Art Deco architectural treasures, pivotal art, music, and history museums―and of course―a massive collection of Route 66 landmarks along its 28-mile stretch of the Mother Road. Tulsa really is the city of everything you could ask for...and more.
Tulsa, OK, has been at the helm of reigniting excitement for true Mother Road experiences for the past several years. And anyone who knows Route 66 knows that neon plays an integral role in bringing once thriving businesses and historic locations back to life. Behind this vital initiative stands one very passionate individual. Check out what Ken Busby and Tulsa are up to.
America is unique for so many wonderful reasons but perhaps our favorite is the nation’s deep dedication to quirky roadside experiences. Once hugely popular with middle class travelers, roadside kitsch died out by the mid-80s, but one man took it upon himself to capture as much of it as he could, while it lasted. Meet John Margolies.
When we think about 1980s films that represent the decade, many films come to mind, but without a doubt, right there in the top picks will be the hilarious Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. This fan fav helped make a young Matthew Broderick a household name. Now an icon in his own right, the actor still has a lot to share.
Vintage attractions, the spots where families travel to spend a few hours to a few days, have largely faded over the years, but one historic California haunt is still welcoming enthusiastic visitors today. Confusion Hill, up in the shade of the redwoods, may look a little dated and a bit long in the tooth, but that is a huge part of the color and experience that a visit there offers, and their story is fascinating.
There are a lot of great stops to make along Route 66 but few true roadside “destinations”. There is the Blue Whale in Catoosa, OK, Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, TX, and Elmer’s Bottle Tree Ranch in Oro Grande, CA, and right up there, there is Red Oak II down in wonderful Carthage, MO. And what a great journey this vintage attraction has had.
Rock Cafe, Stroud, OK. Photograph by Efren Lopez/ Route66Images.
It feels fitting that I am writing this editorial from the Birthplace of Route 66, Springfield, Missouri. I have been enjoying hanging out at one of the newer properties in town, the Vandivort, and am impressed by the beautiful views that the rooftop of the location offers. It has got me thinking though, actually, I’ve been reflecting on it all summer as we’ve traveled, how beautiful America is and how diverse a road trip in this wonderful land is. There has been an energy this summer that we’ve found electric. People are back on the move and there has been an increased hunger for experiential tourism. I have also noticed that there is a younger demographic on the move this year. The 20s and 30-somethings have finally discovered Route 66 and have begun to better appreciate the beauty of classic Americana and roadside gems. Quirky is back in fashion!
As we meander the Mother Road and walk its larger and smaller town squares, we have felt a comradery of sorts with others that we have interacted with. We’ve made ourselves “locals” wherever we have found a spot to sit and people watch — an activity that we hugely enjoy. There is one thing for sure, this country is packed with colorful characters from all walks of life who add value to the unique tapestry of the American story. The other day when we were going for a walk after a pleasant night in Cuba, Missouri, at the historic Wagon Wheel Motel, we were stopped by an Oklahoma couple on their way to St. Louis to visit the Harley-Davidson museum. The gent was enthusiastic, almost bubbling over with his excitement about Route 66. He was bowled over when he politely asked if it was our first time at the motel and was advised that it was actually our 11th . “Eleventh!” he hollered. “I guess you guys must really like Route 66!” He then kept us talking for about twenty minutes, curious about our favorite classic Route 66 books, films, and stops. The night before we had drinks on the grassy lawn with a newly married couple from England who decided to do the Mother Road now as part of their honeymoon. “We both just turned 60, so we decided that we should do Route 66!” they exclaimed.
Every year I travel America’s Main Street for about three straight months, a freedom that I admit most people do not have, but that allows my family and I to reconnect with a highway, a country, and its people, places and story, after a year of focusing on countless stories that we are graced to be allowed to tell and bring to readers. It is a job that we take seriously. However, getting the chance to break away and be back on the road ourselves each summer refreshes and reenergizes us, enabling us to better inspire our passionate team for another year of great issues. Speaking of that, this classic Americana issue is one of my favorites. Annually, it is packed with tantalizing stories about the people and places that define quirky. It is an issue that goes a bit further afield and showcases truly wacky stories that deserve to be told and known. I love celebrating the wider American story.
So, this summer as you travel and even as you don’t, make sure to take the needed time to exhale and treat yourself to a great reading experience. Discover for yourself what magical mysteries the country offers. If you have not already grabbed a copy, please pick up a copy of my new book, Miles to Go: An African Family in Search of America Along Route 66 . You can order it on Amazon or at a ton of other places online. I would love for you to join us on the life-changing journey that really exposed us to the wonders of America’s most beloved highway. It is a story that is filled with great history found nowhere else, fascinating encounters with undeniably unique folks, and perhaps my favorite part, tons of personal interactions and introspection — ours and others. There are a million guides and info-based books out there focusing on Route 66, which is awesome, but why not support and get connected to a great story, too!
Remember to subscribe today in order to never miss another issue and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to stay on top of other (non-magazine) great stories and lots of news and information connected to Route 66 and roadside America. Visit us online, too, and catch up on loads of great backstories and travel ideas.
Blessings,
Brennen Matthews EditorPUBLISHER
Thin Tread Media
EDITOR
Brennen Matthews DEPUTY EDITOR
Kate Wambui
EDITOR-AT-LARGE
Nick Gerlich
LEAD EDITORIAL PHOTOGRAPHER
David J. Schwartz
LAYOUT AND DESIGN
Tom Heffron DIGITAL
Matheus Alves
ILLUSTRATOR
Jennifer Mallon
EDITORIAL INTERNS
Aaron Garza
Ashley Bassick
Kristy Gillespie
CONTRIBUTORS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS
Chandler O’Leary
Efren Lopez/Route66Images
Jessica Allen
Jim Hinckley
Jim Luning
John Margolies
Ken Busby
Mia Goulart
Mitch Brown
Rhys Martin
Timothy O’Connell
Editorial submissions should be sent to brennen@routemagazine.us
To subscribe or purchase available back issues visit us at www.routemagazine.us.
Advertising inquiries should be sent to advertising@routemagazine.us or call 905 399 9912.
ROUTE is published six times per year by Thin Tread Media. No part of this publication may be copied or reprinted without the written consent of the Publisher. The views expressed by the contributors are not necessarily those of the Publisher, Editor, or service contractors. Every effort has been made to maintain the accuracy of the information presented in this publication. No responsibility is assumed for errors, changes or omissions. The Publisher does not take any responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts or photography.
It was April 24th, 1990, a Tuesday, and the world was about to embark on one of the most significant advances in its scientific history. After decades of planning and research, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), — 43.5 feet, the length of a large school bus, and weighing 27,000 pounds, about two adult sized elephants — was launched into space from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The telescope would take images from the deepest reaches of the universe and send them back to Earth, giving scientists a clear peek into distant galaxies.
In the midst of this monumental milestone in America’s history, is the story of the man that the telescope is named after. A man whose roots can be traced back to the Route 66 town of Marshfield, Missouri, where a replica of the Hubble Space Telescope, today stands in his honor.
Edwin Powell Hubble was born in Marshfield in 1889 to Virginia Lee, a homemaker, and John Powell Hubble, an insurance agent. He was the third of seven children. When he was eight years old, the family moved to Wheaton, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, but often made return visits to Marshfield. As a young man, Hubble worked on the Hosmer Ranch, a large dairy farm north of Marshfield, where he would plow the land for the owner.
“Hosmer made the comment that Hubble would never amount to anything. All he wanted was to do was gaze up at the stars, instead of trying to concentrate on his plowing,” said Linda Blazer, a volunteer at the Webster County Historical Museum and former museum director.
Little did Mr. Hosmer know, but he would be proven quite wrong. By age 24, Hubble, an accomplished student and star athlete at Wheaton High School, had not only graduated from the University of Chicago with a Bachelor of Science (1910), but also with a law degree — at the behest of his father — from UK’s Oxford University. While at Oxford, Hubble’s father sadly succumbed to kidney disease, causing Hubble to return to the U.S. where he dabbled in law and teaching before returning to his first love, obtaining a PhD in astronomy from the University of Chicago. By 1919, Hubble had served in World War I and had joined the Mount Wilson Observatory in Pasadena, California. This is where Hubble truly distinguished himself.
In 1924, the same year that he married Grace Burke Leib, Hubble, using a 100-inch Hooker telescope, then the largest telescope in the world, determined that there were other galaxies in the universe beyond the Milky Way. Then in 1929, using a measuring sequence that is now known as Hubble’s Law, his findings confirmed that the universe is expanding — one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the 20th Century. Hubble would continue his incredible career at Mount Wilson and Mount Palomar observatories until his death in 1953, at only 63.
Fast forward 30 years later, and NASA unveiled, arguably, the most powerful single optical astronomical facility ever built and named it after the once stargazing boy from Marshfield.
Even after his many accomplishments, and a NASA space telescope named after him, not a single monument existed in Marshfield to honor its most famous son. That is until William “Bill” Buesgen, another Marshfield native, decided to do something about it.
“He just saw the fact that Edwin Hubble was born here in Marshfield, and not much had been done to recognize that,” said Blazer. “That’s a big calling card for Marshfield now, but back then, even when I was at school, nothing was ever said about the famous astronomer.”
Beusgen, who managed a bed-andbreakfast in town, came up with the idea to build a replica of the HST and became the driving-force behind its construction, raising $4,300 from private donations. In 1994, Buesgen, who had previous experience as a tool and die maker, began building the replica from scratch.
“He saw it as an opportunity to promote the town. It was not an easy sell to begin with. It was hard to get people on board.”
Scaled down from the original telescope to 11.5 feet on an eight-foot-long frame for length and weighing around 1,400 pounds, the stainless-steel replica was finally erected on the west lawn of the Webster County Courthouse in June 1999.
Today, that shining replica, overseen by the Webster County Historical Society, stands engraved for all of history as a testimony to Hubble’s early beginnings in this humble Route 66 town.
The signature events that line Historic Route 66 beckon you to experience the charm and comfort of the Ozarks. Amazing treasures await you along the Mother Road during the Route 66 100-Mile Yard Sale. Bikers commune on the banks of Roubidoux Creek at the Route 66 Hogs and Frogs Festival. Runners conquer Superior Hill during the Frog Hill Half Marathon. Book your stay and get ready to play on a road you’ll always remember.
Experience the unique and fun events only found in the heart of the Ozarks. Plan your trip today at visitpulaskicounty.org/signature-events.
Springfield, Missouri — named the official birthplace of Route 66 — has no shortage of landmarks to celebrate the road it calls home, from the Best Western Route 66 Rail Haven motel to the Gillioz Theatre to the History Museum on the Square, among many others. But there is one often overlooked attraction that sits right on Route 66 on West College Street, a location that celebrates the city’s Mother Road legacy, the Birthplace of Route 66 Roadside Park.
Its story begins in 2013. Thousands of people were traveling through Springfield each year and yet, as Route 66 wound through the city from Kearney to Glenstone to St. Louis Street and through to Park Central Square, there was less and less to see by way of “historic” Route 66 as the highway meandered through to Olive and College Streets. A lot of the original attractions along that section of the road had ceased to exist, but community members believed the city’s heritage of being the birthplace of Route 66 to be something that should be capitalized on and promoted.
And so, the Department of Planning and Development teamed up with community and neighborhood businesses to revamp the College Street Corridor, which ran from Grant Avenue to Kansas Expressway, and bring new life to the old route with fresh infrastructure and strategic development. A traditional Americana theme was chosen, and Great River Associates presented a vision of streetscapes, gateways, plazas and a historic roadside parklike attraction. The first phase of this revitalization plan was the park. The goal for the park was to create a space where visitors could drive or walk through, and where memories of Route 66 could be enjoyed.
A vacant city-owned two-acre site on West College Street, between Fort and Broadway overlooking the West Meadows (Jordan Valley) was earmarked for the park with groundbreaking taking place in May 2014. And in August of 2014, the public was invited to celebrate the dedication of the Birthplace of Route 66 Roadside Park.
“The city has invested both emotionally and financially into preserving our identity,” said Cora Scott, Director of Public Information and Civic Engagement for the City of Springfield. “If you drive down Route 66, you’ll see banners
marking the route and as you get closer to the park, the West Central neighborhood has purchased banners displaying their own logo, further indicative of the amount of community ownership of the identity of Springfield as the Birthplace of Route 66. The park serves as a gathering space, particularly for the neighborhood, as well as a photo op for all who travel through Springfield.”
Envisioned to resemble an old Route 66 roadside stop, the park hosts a colorful a pleasant sign welcoming visitors with text that reads “Birthplace of Route 66 Roadside Park”, a walking path, rain garden, picnic tables, and a $15,000 crowdfunded replica “Giant Hamburg” sign from the nowvanished Red’s Giant Hamburg that once stood on West Sunshine Street. Legend has it that it had the world’s first drive-thru window, and the story is that the owner, Sheldon “Red” Chaney, miscalculated how tall the sign needed to be to fit the word hamburger, so he dropped the ‘er’. The iconic Springfield eatery opened in 1947 and closed in 1984.
On the opposite side of the street lies the College Street Great Mosaic Wall, actually created a decade earlier in 2001, as a public mosaic installation that pays homage to Route 66 and the evolution of College Street. Local residents Stan Adam and Carol Ward came up with the concept to combat graffiti in their neighborhood and enlisted artist Christine Schilling to teach at-risk juveniles, responsible for the graffiti, how to create the mosaic and channel their energy into something positive for the neighborhood. Pieced together over three years with the help of 2,000 school children and members of the community, the artwork stretches a remarkable 600 feet on a wall near where the city’s first cabin was erected by William Fulbright in 1830.
The entire revitalization of the College Street Corridor is still very much in progress, and the city has many plans for its future, including a replica gas station and motor court, neighboring trail system, history walk, amphitheater and an interpretive visitors’ center—all to be built, like the park itself, to transport visitors back in time.
So, when you are next traveling through Springfield, unpack your picnic and savor the park in its present incarnation, for no matter its plans of tomorrow, it’s the elements of its past that make it truly remarkable.
Remember when driving was a joy? Back when you drove to escape, to feel that rush of freedom, or to connect with the person across that bucket seat from you. You’d share a smile when that one song came on; the stereo would get turned up, and windows would get rolled down. You can recapture that moment—or find it for the first time—on Route 66. Feel that horsepowered heartbeat that you’ve been missing in America’s Heartland.
Take the Scenic Route: VisitLebanonMo.org
Photograph by David J. Schwartz - Pics On Route 66
During the 1950s through to the 1970s, towering giant fiberglass statues dotted America’s roads as advertising obelisks for a wide variety of businesses. These ‘Muffler Men’, standing approximately 18–25 feet tall and sporting rocket ships, mufflers, axes, and even hot dogs, stood as monumental attractions, drawing the eye and pocketbook of the motoring public, enticing them to stop and visit for a while. Of course, as with most things, the Muffler Men craze of decades past has come and gone, but remnants of these marketing behemoths remain across the United States, including dotting the Illinois stretch of the Mother Road.
From the Gemini Giant in Wilmington, Tall Paul in Atlanta, to the Lauterbach Muffler in Springfield and the HarleyDavidson Muffler Man in Livingston, these Illinois Muffler Men have come to epitomize Route 66 in Illinois. Like monumental mile markers, they continue to beckon travelers to stop and revel in a bygone era. However, there is one giant, albeit far younger and a bit shorter — 14-feet-tall — than his siblings, that is not as well known or as celebrated. Wielding a soft-serve ice cream cone in one hand and a cheeseburger in the other, Carl the Giant, who stands guard at Carl’s Ice Cream Factory on College Avenue in Normal, Illinois, has most certainly earned his rightful place among the Illinois Route 66 giants family. To get the full story of this smiling giant though, we must travel back in time.
The site at 601 W Locust Street in Bloomington, Illinois, was once home to a Cities Service Station during the 1930s up to the early 1960s. Unfortunately, the station went out of business and the building stayed vacant for a while, until the late 1960s when it became the location of a Mister Softee. Founded by William and James Conway in 1956 in Philadelphia, Mister Softee had become one of the largest franchisers of soft serve ice cream in the United States. Their ice-cream trucks, playing the iconic music box melody that signaled the quintessential summertime cheap treat, became legendary. The company boasted of about 350 franchisees, operating 625 trucks in 18 states, including the one in Bloomington. Mister Softee at 601 W Locust Street would eventually be bought out by Carl Garbe.
Garbe, originally from New York, was a U.S. Navy veteran during WWII who, after the war, had married Betty Sievers and settled in Bloomington. After thirty-two years working for General Telephone, Garbe retired, and in 1980, he and Betty purchased the Mister Softee store and renamed it Carl’s Ice Cream Factory. The ice cream store, which offered window service and outdoor seating, became well known for its premium hard ice cream, made in-house from the freshest ingredients. However, after operating it for six years, the Garbes were ready to sell. Wade Irwin, a local farmer turned real estate investor and his business partner at the time, Robert Willerton, stepped in and by 1986 became the new owners of Carl’s Ice Cream Factory, re-opening it in February of 1987.
“We were looking to diversify some, and this opportunity came up. We went into it and did it, and it all worked out for
the best. [Willerton] retired in 1998 and I bought his interest out and I’ve been running it solo since,” explained Irwin. Already a renowned ice cream shop in Bloomington among the locals by the time of their acquisition, it’s no surprise that Irwin and Willerton were excited to get their hands on this new venture to expand their business portfolios.
By the late 2000s, the business was going strong enough to dare one of the greatest risks and challenges a small business can undertake: opening up a second location. In 2007, Carl’s Ice Cream Factory on College Avenue in Normal opened its doors, taking residence at a former National City Bank building — with a drive-thru — that had been vacant for some time. In addition to the beloved premium hard ice cream that Carl’s was known for, the College Avenue location also added a full menu of burgers, cheese fries, sandwiches, and more. But it wasn’t until a decade had passed that an addition that would set the eatery apart from just another ice cream stop was introduced. Enter Carl the Giant.
“It’s something that people like to see, and I always enjoyed it when we traveled,” said Irwin. “When I was a kid, we’d go down 66, and you’d see all that stuff. I always liked that, and I knew that a giant would be an attention getter, and people would talk about it, and want to see it.”
Irwin had heard of Virginia artist Mark Cline, of Enchanted Castle Studios, through friends, so he commissioned Cline to fashion a muffler man that would exemplify his ice cream eatery. Cline, renowned for making large fiberglass statues of everything from animals and mascots to leprechauns and giants, including Route 66’s famous Buck Atoms of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Chef Muffler Man in Springfield, Missouri, had fashioned many giants to customer’s preferences. “People want theirs to be specific [so] I make them on commission. I’m pretty much the only one out there that’s actually making these to order. There’s one other company in California that has started making them, but they make them right out of the mold. They don’t do them like I do and change them up,” explained Cline.
With his crisp white pants, crimson red buttoned shirt, and soda jerk paper hat, Carl is undeniably a blast from the classic 1940s past, drawing attention from everyday customers of the Bloomington-Normal municipality and travelers on Route 66. “So many kids want to get their pictures taken with him,” quipped Irwin.
As for the future of Carl’s Ice Cream Factory, Irwin is enjoying where they’re at now. “My son and daughter are probably going to take it over some day. They’ve got ideas, especially my son, of expanding, maybe, but as far as myself expanding now, I won’t. They’ll be the ones to carry the ball from then on.”
So, there is a very good chance that Carl will likely continue upholding the great Muffler Man tradition that inspired his creation and continue standing centennial over Carl’s Ice Cream Factory, reminding us of America’s very ungeneric past, for years to come.
On Museum Square in Downtown Bloomington, the Cruisin’ with Lincoln on 66 Visitors Center is located on the ground floor of the nationally accredited McLean County Museum of History.
The Visitors Center is a Route 66 gateway. Discover Route 66 history through an interpretive exhibit, and shop for unique local gift items, maps, and publications. A travel kiosk allows visitors to explore all the things to see and do in the area as well as plan their next stop on Route 66.
CRUISIN’ WITH LINCOLN ON 66 VISITORS CENTER
Open Monday–Saturday 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Free Admission on Tuesdays until 8 p.m. 200 N. Main Street, Bloomington, IL 61701 309.827.0428 / CruisinwithLincolnon66.org
*10% o gift purchases
By Ken Busby
Photographs by Efren Lopez/Route66Images
It all began in 1902 when a French scientist named Georges Claude discovered that passing a high voltage electrical current through inert glasses via electrodes made them glow with a brightness that was, heretofore, unknown. He displayed his invention at the Paris Expo in 1910 and by 1911, Claude, being not only a brilliant scientist but an astute businessman, had secured international patent rights for his new discovery, which he marketed under the name Claude Neon.
Manufacturing neon signs in France and then importing them to the United States proved to be impractical though, so Claude patented his invention in the U.S., an idea that was bought by the Federal Sign & Signal Co. of Chicago who in turn sold franchises to other sign companies in various cities throughout the United States, including one in Tulsa named Claude Neon Federal Signs (CNF) - CLAUDE, after the inventor, NEON from the product itself, and FEDERAL from the licensing company. CNF Tulsa opened in 1926 (the same year that Route 66 was launched) as a branch office, with an additional branch office in Oklahoma City. Claude Neon Federal Signs became a Tulsa owned and operated sign company in 1955 and remains so today.
Tulsa’s neon sign history goes back almost to the beginning of neon. In the late 1920s, Tulsa was a progressive city — oil was king and promoting automobile traffic along this new federal highway, established thanks to the efforts of Cyrus Avery, the Father of Route 66, was paramount. Neon, this glowing, welcoming light, was the most effective way to advertise your motel, service station, restaurant, etc., especially at night, while thousands of motorists traveled west in search of new opportunities. However, most of Tulsa’s historic neon signs date back to the 1940s. Many signs prior to that have pretty much been lost to the annals of time, though there are some amazing signs that have persevered, like the Meadow Gold sign located at 11th and Peoria, which dates to 1939/40. With each face measuring 30x30 feet, it is one of the largest neon signs to dominate the Tulsa landscape, establishing itself as a landmark. The marker was originally erected at East 11th Street & South Lewis Avenue, advertising the Meadow Gold Dairy, a dairy company once owned by Beatrice Foods. However, after over three decades of lighting the night sky, the sign’s lights started dimming and by the 90s, the glow sadly went dark. When the building on which the sign stood was sold and earmarked for demolition, Tulsans and Route 66 enthusiasts across the country rallied to save the historic landmark. Mercifully, in 2004, the Tulsa Foundation for Architecture managed to
acquire it and moved the sign to its current location. The Foundation was awarded a National Park Service Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program grant to restore the beacon. A support pavilion was erected and the sign, restored by CNF Signs, shines brightly today. This sign and its location led to the establishment of the Meadow Gold District, a business-and-tourism focused destination that highlights an important stretch of Route 66 in Tulsa.
The year before the NPS grant, the City of Tulsa partnered with Tulsa County to pass a tax package called Vision 2025. One of the aspects of this package was the creation of the Cyrus Avery Plaza next to the old 11th Street Bridge (now the Cyrus Avery Route 66 Memorial Bridge), the key reason that Route 66 came to Tulsa! The addition of the plaza and the bronze sculpture, “East Meets West,” started to really bring Route 66 to the forefront of Tulsa’s collective mind.
Then, in 2016, Mayor Dewey Bartlett worked with me and City Councillor Jeannie Cue to establish the Tulsa Route 66 Commission. This Commission had been envisioned when Vision 2025 had first been approved, but it took some time to come into fruition. The Commission was created by the Mayor’s Executive Order with a broad goal, “To drive the enhancement, development, visitor experience, and revitalization of the authentic Route 66, elevating the Tulsa region’s national and international brand as a premier historic and cultural destination for residents and visitors.” A second Vision Tulsa Package provided funding for the Commission to carry out its mission.
So, after addressing Route 66 shields in the roadbed and better signage along Tulsa’s two alignments of Route 66, totaling 28 fabulous miles, the Commission launched the Tulsa Route 66 Neon Sign Grant Program in 2019. To date, this program has resulted in more than 60 new and refurbished neon signs lighting the night sky on Route 66 in Tulsa. The program has been transformational for Tulsa’s neon sign enthusiasts. It works basically like this: if a business is located within 300 feet of either Route 66 alignment in Tulsa (Admiral Blvd from 1926-1932, 11th Street, which turns into Southwest Blvd, from 1932 to the present) or within 600 feet of major intersections, your business qualifies for a matching grant of up to $10,000 to refurbish an existing sign or create a new sign to highlight your business. This grant program has restored some very personal, historic signs like Billy Ray’s Barbeque on Southwest Blvd, which had been dark for more than 20 years, and whose handwriting on the sign was Billy Ray’s mother’s. And it has led to some very creative new signs like Chicken and the Wolf complete with “dancing” flames on 11th Street across from the University of Tulsa.
Tulsa has a long and cherished history as a city of arts and culture, and neon signs celebrate the rich past and envision an even brighter future, introducing new generations to the potential of neon, not only as an advertising strategy, but as a creative outlet, too. So, plan a trip to Tulsa soon — and plan an overnight stay. Nightfall transforms the city’s sea of midnight black into a realm of radiant colors as neon lights up, creating a sweet humming in the air and an unforgettable brightness in the night.
Howdy Burger Neon Sign on East 11th Street.
Wildflower Cafe neon sign on East 11th Street.
By Nick Gerlich
Photographs by John Margolies
he American roadside has long been populated by tourist attractions and oddities, colorful diners, quirky mom-and-pop motels, and over the top gas stations. They are part and parcel of our car culture, which was planted a century ago when highway travel began in earnest, and then mushroomed after WWII. The problem, if there was one, is that no one recognized the short-term nature of these entities, that they too need to be documented just as much as any other aspect of a society.
TAfter all, this was part of the zeitgeist, the ongoing pop culture, and it evolved one year to the next. The roadside changes in the name of progress, and while newspapers may preserve some of that history, how much better it would be if there were a photographic record.
Enter, John Samuel Margolies (MAR-go-leez), a one-man army equipped with camera and enough film to keep the Kodak heirs in residuals for years to come. In what may seem to some as a Sisyphean task, Margolies set out nonetheless around 1969 to capture as much as he could of the treasures that lay just at the roadside. Today, the bulk of his work is in the public domain, a lasting tribute to a man who singlehandedly made shooting signs and other artifacts cool, long before Instagram was ever conceived.
John Samuel Margolies was born May 16, 1940, in Connecticut. As a child, he often found himself a back seat occupant in his parents’ car as they took family road trips.
He became fascinated by the many roadside attractions he would see and regularly begged his parents to stop, but his parents were of a generation that eschewed such distractions, shunning them as roadside clutter.
A seed was planted in young Margolies, though, and while at the University of Pennsylvania, he earned undergraduate degrees in history and journalism, and a master’s degree in communications. Along the way, he developed a fear that these roadside attractions would continue to disappear, replaced by modernist architecture, and that they should be documented.
In 1964, Margolies went on to work as an assistant editor at Architectural Record , followed by a stint in 1970 as a program director at the Architectural League of New York. His work appeared in exhibits as well as academic journals. Along the way, he became enamored by novelty architecture, especially structures employing programmatic architecture, such as a coffee shop in a building that resembled a coffee pot, or a shoe repair shop inside of a large shoe. His New York City home was far from a nonurban existence, and he was fascinated with the America that started just outside of City Limits.
Margolies went on to author or co-author a dozen books and was funded by several foundations. He also had teaching stints at the University of California both in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, the California Institute of Arts, and the Pratt Institute. During his many road trips, which typically were in late Spring and early Fall, if only to avoid tourists, Margolies drove more than 100,000 miles, documenting the vibrant, if fading, American roadside. He traveled throughout the Lower 48 states, and by the time that he retired, his collection numbered more than 13,000 images.
Undeniably, the task that Margolies gave himself was daunting. America is a big, widely spacedout country, but what many who do not know the man may not appreciate is that his mission was made even more difficult due to some of his particular idiosyncrasies. Never mind that he was shooting with film and had to be cognizant of keeping it cool both prior to and after use. While digital photography had started becoming mainstream by the mid-1990s, Margolies continued using his old tried and true SLR with Kodachrome. However, keeping film safe and finding labs to process and print his images were, relatively speaking, the least of his issues. Margolies was a fair-weather photographer. If sunshine and clear skies were predicted to the northwest, that is the direction he would travel. Sometimes, in retrospect, his route began to resemble a drunkard’s walk, if only because he was adamant about all of his photos being taken under perfect conditions. No rain. No snow. No clouds. It had to be perfect, or he did not shoot there, even if he stumbled upon a fine specimen to shoot.
Not one to play the cards he was dealt, he simply insisted upon a re-deal.
And then there was his problem with artifacts of the landscape, such as cars and people. He insisted that his photos be void of them, and if either were present, he would either wait it out, or simply move along. Sometimes he would even go inside establishments and plead with people to move their cars, which, fortunate for him, at times did work.
Ellen Warren, a journalist with the Chicago tribune, met Margolies at a conference sometime in the 1990s and had a chance to do a ride-along with him. “I told him, if you’re ever going to come through Chicago, let me know, I’d like to come along with you.” A number of years passed, but then out of the blue, “He called me and said that he was going on a trip locally.” She seized the opportunity.
“He was always worried that there was something wrong with his film,” said Warren. “After our trip he went back to New York and went directly from the airport to his film processor. Forty-eight hours later, he called, and said, ‘This is Johnny. I have all my pictures back and they came out. Hooray.’ And then he hung up.”
But wait, there’s more. Margolies hated anything in his frame that was not supposed to be there, at least in his mind’s eye. This included trash, which he was known to meticulously pick up before taking his shots. No random cigarette butt should ever besmirch his images, and he made sure that his canvas was always clean. In fact, that perfectly clean blue-sky canvas became his signature style.
Margolies would start his day at a half hour past sunrise, primarily because he loved morning light. He lived on a steady diet of fast food, perhaps a silent homage to the roadside architecture that he was busy capturing. He knew which chain had the best plastic utensils (Wendy’s), and that he could always count on McDonald’s for both a restroom and a coffee. He even had his favorite condiments. His
penchant for orderliness and cleanliness were manifested in other ways.
“He had a Chapstick that had to be in a specific pocket. He had a special way to wash the windows of his car. He remade the bed in the motel because he liked the covers and sheets to be tight,” continued Warren.
By virtue of his being both a pioneer and having started his lifelong project long before the internet era, he either aimed his vehicle relying on luck and providence, or perhaps the words of someone else who had tipped him off to a unique attraction or building. There were no books other than his to document such things, and certainly no websites or social media platforms. In many ways, it was a crap shoot.
Furthermore, Margolies preferred to travel alone, never putting his traveling fates in the hands of others. He was in charge of his destiny, and without a companion—human or phone app—to provide voice instructions or logistical guidance, he had to juggle maps, notes, and the steering wheel.
“He had a method. He would not have entertained anyone tampering with his long specific method that he used in his travels, his car, his note taking, his photographing,” said Warren “The last thing that he would have done would be to ask me to help in any way. As we drove, he told me that he once – once! – set out with a companion. ‘She lasted five days. And took a bus back from Centerville, Indiana. Because, when I travel it’s me, me and ME!’ This might explain why a single day traveling with Margolies is at once stimulating, overwhelming and, to put it nicely, enough of a good thing.”
It was after each trip that he would finalize his tour map, highlighted and written upon to serve as a historical record, at least to himself, of where he had been. It is uncertain if, and where, these records exist.
“He knows what he wants to do. He knows how he wants to take his pictures. And he likes to talk about himself,” explained Warren. “He knew that he was an eccentric character. All I had to do was ask questions and take down the answers. He had a very specific way of approaching his career, and he did not want to depart from his methodology. He knew what he wanted. That’s how he rolled.”
If anything, Margolies’ quirks became his chief attributes. It was his fastidious commitment to duty and quality that drove him to complete the collection he did. Were it not for his traits, which some might deem odd and reflective of the recluse that he was, this seminal work may not exist.
However, his rather simple life found him unable to travel in the late-90s and early-00s. Not owning a car added to his travel expenses, which twenty years ago he estimated to be $200 a day. This did not weaken his resolve, though, as he managed to keep shooting well into his 60s.
From 1935 through 1944, the Farm Service Administration hired several photographers to document the American way of life. Notables such as Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Jack Delano, and others were paid to travel the country to capture buildings, people, and even trains. Those photos became an important historical record, and today they are held in the Library of Congress as the Office of War Information Photograph Collection.
When the late C. Ford Peatross was an Architectural Curator at the Library of Congress, he become aware of, and befriended, John Margolies. Peatross even co-authored one of Margolies’ books, but Peatross recognized something far
greater in Margolies’ massive collection: they represented a historical documentation of the American roadside, on par with the works decades earlier under the auspices of the FSA.
And in 2007, he began working with Margolies to acquire the collection, even if in parcels over nearly a decade. “The collection was initially acquired by Peatross. We began to acquire materials in 2007, and continued to acquire them through 2015, with most of the materials arriving toward the end of that period,” said Micah Messenheimer, Curator of Photography at the Library of Congress. “This included the slide collection and a smaller collection of other items. In those discussions, they were [also] able to come to the decision to place all of the items in the public domain.”
In total, there were 11,710 images acquired by the Library, as well as hundreds of ephemeral items, which ranged from postcards to matchbooks and many other printed items. Margolies had a penchant for every form of printed advertising. He not only collected many pieces, but also meticulously documented them in more than 400 pages of handwritten notation.
“The Library has a long-standing history of collecting materials that document the country, and in some ways, the way that Margolies was looking at this vernacular architecture was similar to what photographers who were employed as part of the Farm Service Administration were doing in the 1930s.”
The most recent photo in the collection was taken in 2008, meaning that Margolies’ work spans roughly 40 years, the earliest being from 1969. The majority of the photos at the Library, though, are from the late-70s through early-80s. They are all available to view via the Library’s website. A much smaller portion of his work was acquired by the Henry Ford Museum, including images and ephemera.
Margolies was invited to speak at a Symposium in 2011 that was hosted by the Library of Congress. Following lengthy introductions and tributes, Margolies took the stage and wowed viewers with a sampling of his work, including historic theatres, early gas stations, courthouses, motels and the signs, and much more. It was a fitting appearance for a man whose life work was, at that time, about half-way acquired by the Library.
A shy, reclusive man, Margolies was not convinced of the redeeming value of his work until Peatross assured him of it. Until that point, he thought his passion to be something with intrinsic value, but no more.
Scarcely a year after the vast majority of his work was acquired by the Library and digitized for web display, Margolies passed away. He died on May 26, 2016, and was 76 years old. He was survived by a female partner, as well as friends and colleagues who admired his work from a distance. Little did he know that throughout his life, he had inspired a cadre of roadside photographers who have continued his work, but this time in the social media era. Today, Margolies’ influence can be seen in hundreds of photos posted daily on Instagram, each capturing signage and other oddities that comprise the American vernacular.
And all because of a restless kid in the backseat who worried about those roadside attractions he spied along the highway. His love for roadside America lives on, though, through the work of his followers, as well as in the eyes of those viewing online.
Not bad for a man with a camera and a bag of film.
Photograph by David J. Schwartz - Pics On Route 66
Surrounded by the Mojave’s wind and extreme temperatures, stands a solitary 30-foot-tall sign, its weather beaten, faded lettering, barely tracing out the words ‘Road Runner’s Retreat’ at the top and in larger font at the bottom, ‘RESTAURANT’. This classic sign has borne witness to the history played out along this stretch of sun-baked Route 66 asphalt and begs the question of its story. A story that takes us back 60 years, and maybe even, a little bit further.
It was the early 1920s when James Albert Chambless from Arkansas settled in the area near the intersection of Cadiz Road and the National Trails Highway. It may have been intuition or incredible foresight, but when the highway was designated Route 66, Chambless quickly expanded his humble settlement into a gas station, cafe, market, and cabins. The site became known as Chambless Camp. By 1939, a post office was established, and a vibrant little community developed. Chambless and his wife Frannie ran this desert oasis, serving the motoring public traveling Route 66, until 1944 when they sold the business.
Fast forward to the early 1960s, and a truck driver by the name of Roy Tull, purchased a 40-acre property about a mile and a half west of Chambless with the vision of developing a truck stop that would serve as a strategic stopover between Needles and Barstow. However, in 1962, even before construction was complete, Tull and his wife Helen sold their development, which consisted of a restaurant and service station, to F.B. “Duke’ Dotson. The Tulls stayed on to manage the eatery for a few months prior to Dotson and his family moving on-site in 1963, from Montclair, California.
“I started out thinking my life is over,” expressed Duke Dotson, F.B. Dotson’s son. “My dad told me that I was going to get two kinds of education. One from a book and, he goes, ‘You’re going to get [the other] one from meeting the many different people that will come through this place. That alone will be an education.’ And he was right. It turns out that it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
At the time, a classic red and yellow diner sign lay upon the entrance of the restaurant, with a tilted overhang at the service station, encompassing the popular 1960s Googie style of the era. An animated, conspicuous neon sign, installed around 1965 and featuring a large metal roadrunner at the top with neon legs lit in sequence to appear as if the roadrunner was running, caught the traveler’s eye from miles away. In addition to the restaurant and gas station cum garage, the Dotsons also operated a towing service.
Under the Dotson’s ownership, business boomed. This desert ‘retreat’ not only served the local burgeoning community, but it was a welcome reprieve from the long hot
drive across the Mojave. Elvis, Johnny Cash, and Johnny Carson are even rumored to have sought refuge here.
However, as with many other mom-and-pop establishments on the Mother Road, the impending opening of Interstate 40 in 1972 was a death knell to the operation. On that monumental day, the Interstate completely bypassed the entire stretch of Route 66, taking its traffic with it. A railroad worker who stopped in at the restaurant for coffee was the only customer that day.
“It was just like the movie Cars. One day we had brisk business, and the diner was full. The next day it was like someone shut off the tap of a water faucet. There were no more travelers on the road. Overnight we were put out of business,” recounted Dotson, sadly.
And just like that, a business, a livelihood, and an era in history came to a sudden end. The Dotsons sold the property to Bill Ross Murphy, a friend, whose plan was not to reopen the business but to keep it within the family and preserve and maintain the property for its historic significance on Old Route 66. Murphy kept up with the property, visiting frequently and even hosting a 1986 Dodge Daytona TV commercial on condition that the film crew give the diner — “Expressway Diner” — a face lift. However, it wasn’t too long before the property and the sign succumbed to the weather and vandals.
“Thereafter, my grandfather got ill and wasn’t able to spend as much time out there,” said Ryan Anderson, the current caretaker and grandson to Murphy.
Today, what remains of that once popular desert oasis is the restaurant building — a fire in 2019 destroyed most of the contents inside — the gas station building, and that 30-foot-high weathered sign that still stands as a recognition of the life that the property once had.
“I’ve got to save as much as I can of the history in the area because everything else is deteriorating and nobody is caring for anything out there,” said Anderson. “The sign has started to fade, significantly. As a kid I remember I could see it from exiting Kelbaker and coming down 66, miles away, and now you can’t see it. It’s just kind of wandering into the desert.”
Through a National Park Service grant and private donations, Anderson is on a mission to restore the sign to its former glory. “We actually relit what we could back in 2019, but as far as being lit regularly, that ended in late 1973.”
Currently the wiring on the ground is being repaired and the goal is to have the painting, electrical, and a fully functional neon laced ‘running’ roadrunner back at the top of the sign by the Route 66 centennial in 2026. In the quiet darkness of the desert night, out on this barren stretch of Mother Road, won’t that be quite a sight to see.
When you think of classic roadside America, diners, larger-than-life attractions, and neon signs probably come to mind. The mesmerizing, multicolored lights once dotted the highways and byways of America, competing for the eye and pocketbook of the motoring public. Businesses, from motels and cafes, car dealerships and appliance stores, to plumbing and even construction, had customized neon signs that defined their business, setting them apart from the rest. However, by the mid-1970s, these phosphorescent signs began to fade, traded in for more affordable alternatives. Today, down in the Route 66 town of St. James, Missouri, stands one of these quirky signs, that although now dark, represents a time in history when neon ruled the road.
It was 1948, and Oscar and Florence Friede made a big decision, to start a plumbing business on 9731 Gravois Road, in South St. Louis, just off the Affton underpass. To perfectly position and promote their business, the couple spent $950 — roughly $12,000 today — to have their very own neon sign made. The design depicted a water faucet, with a series of five neon droplets under the spout. When lit, the animated ‘drips’ turned on in sequence, one at a time, towards an impending splash. Neon lettering included FRIEDE at the top of the sign and PLUMBING below. Not only did the sign speak to what their business was, it was so animated and eye-catching that it attracted the attention of neighborhood kids who made up a game involving throwing rocks at the sign. The Friedes would find a pile of rocks underneath it each morning.
“That’s really its charm, the animation,” said Bob Gehl, member of the Neon Preservation Committee in Missouri. “That’s really what makes it cool. They were proud of their business. It was their calling card. It was live, it was attracting attention, and it was generating business.”
However, by the late 1960s, the Friedes wanted to retire and their son, Donald (Don) Charles Sr. and his wife, Delores (Dee) took over the business. But by 1974, Don wanted out of the plumbing business, so he sold Friede Plumbing to his brother-in-law, Joe Hatfield Jr. — Hatfield changed the name
to Plumbing Engineers — and moved down to St. James. Here, he opened up a concrete products supply business and named it Murdon Concrete Products. Interestingly, whether it was for nostalgia or practical reasons, he made the unexpected decision to take the distinctive sign from the plumbing business with him and installed it at his new company at 14241 Old Highway 66, in St. James. To match the new company name, the neon sign lettering was changed to ‘MURDON’.
“There’s been times that the sign has been beat up from hail and because of all of the neon on it, it had to be totally redone,” said Donald Murray Friede, son of Don Sr. and Dee. “It’s been 20 years, probably, at least. We had it taken down, got rid of all of the cloth wiring from the forties and had the neon redone. We had the sign repainted and put back up.”
When Don Sr. and Dee retired, Donald and his brother, David, took over and ran the business until 2019, when SI Precast/ The Wilbert Group, a precast products manufacturing company headquartered in Kansas, purchased it. “It doesn’t light up anymore, but the sign is still there. Maintenance wasn’t done to it. Something like that takes a lot of money to keep it maintained because of the neon,” said Donald.
Today, right on the side of Historic Route 66, it represents a landmark for locals in the broader area and a fantastic photo opportunity for those traveling through. It no longer has its neon shine and some of the fresher paint is wearing thin so that passersby can see the original “Friede” and the “P” from “plumbing” peeking through.
“We’d love to have that sign restored,” Gehl said. “We’d hate to see it leave the roadside. If it ever came to pass that they’d have to sell it to a collector or a picker, it would leave the road and you would never see it again.”
So, the next time you’re cruising Route 66 in Missouri, look out for this work of art from a time when quirky and creative were more important than today’s boring generic realities. Nearly eight decades later, this sign still deserves to be talked about.
See our history at the museum and the El Garces Hotel. Explore the town to go mural sighting. Play a round of golf. Bring your boat/jet ski and travel up and down the Colorado River. Enjoy a picnic with your family in one of our many parks. Campgrounds, RV sites, Cabins, and Off roading adventures are waiting for you... and much more!
The decade of the 1980s was a good one! I should know, I came of age during the decade of excess. This was a time of weekend trips to the movie theater, the true birth of the Blockbuster, and the wonderful cinematic gift of movies like Stand By Me , The Goonies , The Lost Boys , Sixteen Candles , and the teen champ of them all, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Numerous young actors emerged at the time but right up there at the top was Matthew Broderick. Easy going, funny, and charming in his unassuming way, Broderick won audiences over and helped to define a generation. However, unlike others in this iconic group, the New Yorker was quickly able to surpass the limitations of being a teen actor and catapult into, not only some of the biggest films of the decade and beyond, but make a name for himself on Broadway, as well. He even starred as the voice of adult Simba in one of Disney’s most successful films, The Lion King
In 1997, he married actress Sarah Jessica Parker, and they would go on to have three children, a boy and twin girls. In 2001, Broderick, starred opposite Nathan Lane, in the hugely successful Broadway play, The Producers. The play went on to offer over 2,500 performances and won a record-breaking 12 Tony awards.
Today, Broderick has over 83 credits to his name and is still busy in defining projects like the new Netflix limited series, Painkiller, a dramatic take on the opioid crisis that continues to ravage American society, and a number of promising feature films, proving that he is still as relevant as ever, and here to stay.
You come from a show business family — your dad was a well-respected actor, and your mom was a playwright — but you initially weren’t sure that you wanted to become an actor yourself. What made you decide to pursue the craft?
When I was little, around six, it was summertime and my dad asked me and my sister to be in a play with him. I don’t remember what play it was, but I think Frank Langella was directing it. My sister was like, ‘Sure!’ but I basically burst into tears because I was so petrified. I didn’t really have a desire to be in front of people. I was not a great reader, so the idea of holding a script, with everybody looking at me, was just not my thing. On the other hand, apparently when I was very little, I wrote on my library card as my profession: actor, so, some part of me wanted to be. (Laughs)
Then I went to high school… I sort of picked that specific high school because they had a good theater, so I was thinking about it at 13 or 14, but then I didn’t audition for anything. I played sports and I hurt my knee — I had knee surgery when I was 15 — and I couldn’t play any sports that year, so I auditioned for A Midsummer Night’s Dream in high school, and I played the part of one of the mechanicals, which is a teeny part, but really funny, so it was a kind of a perfect beginning. I felt it went well, and from then on, I basically did everything I could in school, and that led to doing the play with my dad at HB Studio, a little off-off Broadway theater in New York City. It was a Horton Foote play. I was 17.
When it was time to go to college, I decided that I wanted to try to be an actor instead, so I went to acting school. The deal was that I would try it for a year, and if it wasn’t going
well or whatever, I would go to college. After about a year of disappointments, I got Torch Song Trilogy, which became a very successful play. And that led to me being more likely to get jobs.
When you were doing the play with your dad, was it more nerve-wrecking acting with your father, or comforting?
It was kind of nerve wrecking; the whole thing was nerve wrecking. It was my very first play outside of school. My dad, who had always helped me when I was doing plays in high school, he would give me advice, decided not to do so for this play. He was like, ‘Well, I’m in this with you, so I shouldn’t be giving you direction.’ I remember we were playing a Southern family in 1918, with Texas accents, and he would just yell at me with this accent, and I just thought that it was silly, in a way, to see my dad so serious. So, I had a little trouble; it was almost harder for me to get into the role. But Horton Foote who wrote and directed it was extremely kind to me, so it was a pretty good introduction.
What was the transition from the stage to your first major film, WarGames (1983)?
Well, at that stage, I auditioned for absolutely anything. I was reading for plays, commercials, TV, movies... Herbert Ross, who was directing a play called Brighton Beach Memoirs, and doing a Neil Simon play… I auditioned for that like five or six times. And the last day I auditioned was on a Broadway stage and they said, ‘Come back and audition with the guy playing the brother, we want to see how you look together,’ and then they said, ‘By the way, Herbert is doing a movie: Max Dugan Returns , can you read for that too?’
I said, ‘Can I read the script?’ And they were like, ‘Just read.’ And I was like, “Well, I have to go, I have another appointment,’ which I don’t think was true, but I wanted to have a peek at the script, so they let me take it. Later, I sat with Herbert in the audience of this Broadway theater where I was auditioning for Brighton Beach [Memoirs], I just sat next to him in this seat and we read through all the scenes in Max Dugan Returns, and then I auditioned again for Brighton Beach, and then when I was leaving the theater they said, ‘I’m not supposed to tell you this, but you got both parts.’
So, I got a lead in a Broadway show and my very first movie. I don’t know how that happened, but that’s what happened. I had been reading for this movie called The Genius which became WarGames… I read for that one a billion times, too. It kept falling apart. I don’t know what happened, but then suddenly I’m in Max Dugan Returns and I’m a little more attractive, you know, and they came and looked at some footage from Max Dugan, the director of WarGames came and looked when we were in LA, and he liked it and cast me.
You know what’s interesting about WarGames ? If you look at a lot of the other movies that came out that were sci-fi from that era, most of them don’t hold up. But WarGames is still a great film today.
Yeah! I haven’t seen it in a long time, but I talked to one of the creators of it the other day actually and he was
saying how it’s still going on, the fear, in a different way, with artificial intelligence, and Joshua (supercomputer in WarGames). It’s sort of the same story. Yeah, the computers certainly look ancient in the movie, but the issues in that film are still going on.
A few years later, in 1986, you landed the lead on one of the decade’s most iconic films, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off . When you were auditioning for Ferris Bueller, did you have any conception that it was going to turn out to be such a classic film?
No, I had no idea. I was doing Biloxi Blues on Broadway at the time. WarGames and Brighton Beach had come out and I was actually being sent a lot of scripts at that time. So, there came Ferris Bueller, and everybody was like, ‘It’s John Hughes! He’s the Steven Spielberg of teen movies. You have to work with John Hughes!’ and I of course hadn’t really seen any of his movies. I had to go to Blockbuster or whatever it was before Blockbuster and rent Sixteen Candles. Actually, I might have seen The Breakfast Club at the theater, I don’t remember, but I rented these movies and then I watched them, and they were really great.
But I didn’t really know what to do. I had done two plays where I talked to the audience and Ferris Bueller talked directly to the audience, so I was like, maybe I shouldn’t be talking to the audience again, you know? I didn’t know if it was a good idea. But my manager [at the time] flew to New York and was like, ‘You’re not not doing it!’ He convinced me, and he was right. I met John and I really liked him, and that’s how it happened. But I didn’t know that it would last at all, I had no idea. But then 40 years pass and suddenly it’s the defining moment of a time and all that, but we had absolutely no idea when making it.
WarGames put you in front of a younger, wider audience than theater, and then Ferris Bueller hugely built on that and became an audience favorite really fast. Did you get a lot of fame and recognition on the streets at this time? How did you handle it?
It happened a little bit gradually, but certainly after that movie it went up. I was working so much that I almost didn’t notice. I mean, I kept being in other states and shooting. But yeah, you know, when it starts out, you’re so happy, because you get a great table everywhere, you have all this money in your pocket, girls who didn’t used to like you now think that you’re the greatest thing, and it seems great. But then… I had a very strong family, and I had a father who’d been an actor, who’d been somewhat famous too, he was in a show called Family, when I was a teenager. At that time, everybody kept coming up to the table when we were eating and telling him that they liked him, and that annoyed me when I was young. So, at first it seems great, but then you start having a similar conversation over and over again with strangers, and it’s not that they’re bad, it’s just that they’re kind of the same.
You and Sarah Jessica [Parker] have always been a very private couple.
Yeah, we do try to be. Sarah Jessica is super famous. That’s another level that I’m not. Even when I was in the 1980s, with Ferris Bueller, it wasn’t like there were paparazzi standing around my apartment. If I didn’t go to certain places where that happened, it didn’t. I was left alone, totally. I’ve always gotten around New York just fine. But once I got with Sarah Jessica, yeah, we’ve had our periods of incredible scrutiny.
You and Sarah Jessica are coming up on almost 30 years of marriage. Marriage takes a lot of work, but what would you say, as a husband, has kept you guys together for three decades?
Man, it sounds terrifying when you say it that way. (Laughs)
I guess, you know, when we have problems, we’ve managed to get through them. I guess we must, deep down, be well suited, it has to be admitted. It happens one day at a time as they say. It happens… 30 years happens. We take care of each other in some way. I think, even if we’re pissed off or annoyed by each other, we always want the best for each other. I feel very supported, and I think she feels that for me, and even if she wants to hit me with a 2x4 once in a while, she doesn’t. And she knows I have her back; she always has my support.
Right around the time that Ferris Bueller took off, the ‘Brat Pack’ phenomenon also became a thing. Ally Sheedy who was on WarGames with you got swept up into it, largely because of The Breakfast Club , and others like Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Rob Lowe, etc. How do you think you escaped getting pulled too much into that?
You know, one thing, I wasn’t in those big ensembles… I think if you were in The Breakfast Club or St. Elmo’s Fire, you were f**ked. But I also lived in New York, so I didn’t know a lot of those people [Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez]. I knew Ally. I know Andrew McCarthy now; we worked together after that. I think he’s a great fellow. I’ve met Emilio. I’ve met everybody after a while, that’s how it is, and I like and respect all of them and always felt bad for that situation. I love Molly Ringwald; I still know her. She had her own battles. They got so famous, some of them, so fast. It’s not easy.
Is it true you were offered Family Ties but turned it down?
Yes, that is true. I auditioned for Family Ties, and I got the call that I got the part, not realizing I had signed an agreement that said that by auditioning, I was agreeing to do the show, which I did not really understand at the time. Anyway, at the same time I got Brighton Beach, a Broadway play, and I was up for WarGames, and I had a feeling that I might get WarGames. I loved Family Ties , but do I really want to move to LA now? My dad is sick. Do I want to tie myself to a television series or do I want to make this Broadway debut that I’m close to being cast in? I had to do a little gamble. It was like, ‘Do I want to roll the dice on Broadway and a movie? Or do I want to take Family Ties?’ That was the decision I made. It was a terrifying decision. I walked all over New York City trying to figure out what to do.
The interesting thing back then was that if you did network TV, you rarely made it to the big screen.
Yeah, it was like ‘You’re gone.’ But look at Michael J. Fox, so it wasn’t fully true.
And Michael was so good in it.
I’ve known him for 40 years. The way he has met this moment so beautifully, I mean... It’s awful what’s happened to him [his Parkinson’s diagnosis], and to a lot of people, but he doesn’t seem to see it that way, and he’s just made it into… he’s just great. He’s an amazing, incredible person.
So, I recently rewatched Glory (1989). I’d not seen it in years, but it’s still a great movie. The Civil War was just a horrible war, terrible. What drew you to the picture?
Well, I got sent a book that it was based on, I’m not even sure that there was a script when I first… Freddie Fields, the legendary producer, who had worked on WarGames too, sent me a book with pictures of Robert Shaw and the 54th [Massachusetts Regiment] and I guess maybe a script already. I didn’t know about it, and I was shocked that it wasn’t more famous. So, I was very interested. It seemed like such an exciting thing to do. Then Ed Zwick came on and it just went step by step. I didn’t have an overall career path planned. I’ve never really had that. I just did
whatever seemed the most interesting thing to come my way. I just try and pick the best ones.
When you came on, were Morgan Freeman and Denzel Washington already part of the cast? What was it like working with them?
I don’t remember, but it was fantastic. I was so thrilled that those two were involved in it though. Morgan was already legendary, and I was so happy to just get to know the guy from The Electric Company. I loved him, and just wanted to be around him all the time.
Denzel was more of an up-and-comer, we both were at that time, but then he shot off. I got along great with him. Every now and then I still run into Denzel and I’m always so happy to see him. He’s one of the greatest actors alive, but he’s also a very normal guy. He was a good gossipy actor friend when we were working together. We both b*tched about the same things which was nice. (Laughs)
My dad was killed in a road accident when I was 17 and now, even at 49, that painful memory still rears its head at times. It’s certainly impacted how I’ve parented. My son is 15 now, and as he gets closer to 17…
Yeah, I know that feeling.
Your dad died when you were 20, so you were pretty much around the same age, on the cusp of adulthood. Were you and your dad close?
Very close. Yeah, I had gone into his business and even before that we were always… I was the only boy, and me and my dad were extremely close. He died of thyroid cancer.
How long was he sick, as far as where he knew he was terminal?
Well, the kind he had is very unusual and they kind of understand the minute that they know that it’s basically hopeless, which is very unusual for thyroid cancer. So, they knew that he had a very poor chance as soon as they did a biopsy. He lived about a year, which is what they said he would.
You stayed really busy after he died. Other people would’ve shut off, maybe set their career aside because they couldn’t focus on something else, but you got deep into work.
I didn’t do that consciously. I was in the middle of shooting WarGames when he died… It wasn’t a shock, you know? He was very ill. I flew home, then I flew back and shot the rest of it. You can’t stop shooting a movie. I guess you can, but I didn’t. And I had other jobs still scheduled and I just kept going. I didn’t think, ‘I better stop working and grieve’ or whatever. It never occurred to me. I just kept working. And probably, secretly, and in some ways, I liked that, because it got me out of some thinking. You kind of want to have a distraction and to be busy, but it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t gradually creep up on you anyway.
You have three children now, a 20-year-old and two 13-year-old twins. Has the way you were raised influenced much of how you parent?
I mean, there’s things that I think I’ve gotta not do, because my parents did them, and I don’t agree with them, but even when I think that, I end up doing exactly the same thing! (Laughs) It’s like… things about my dad that I really didn’t like, I find myself doing the exact same things with my son. There are some things that I try to avoid that I remember from growing up and there are a lot of things I’ve learned from my parents that I try to pass on. My kids didn’t meet their grandad, or their grandma really, so I try to keep my old days alive. I want them to have that influence. And I try very hard not to die while my son is 20. I’ve almost managed. (Laughs)
Isn’t it amazing how once we have kids, suddenly we get that fear that we may not get the needed time? The fear just comes out of the woodwork. You might not think about it and then suddenly, when you’re a dad, it’s like, ‘Oh jeez.’
Yeah. Having kids makes you much more aware of the calendar, I think. They keep graduating, they keep going to their next year in school, and you look ahead and think, ‘When did they leave home?’ You can feel time passing when you have kids.
You have lived in New York most of your life. Have you and the family ever explored America from behind the wheel?
No, I don’t think we have. We’ve done a lot of traveling as a family, but rarely all packed into the car. We’ve probably driven up to like Rhode Island or Maine, we’ve done that a few times. None of us have ventured to like Chicago or gone on a real drive. I think a drive like that when the kids were little would have been particularly… I don’t know how families do it. But we’ve been to Utah, my daughters are in Alabama right now on a school trip.
We go to Europe a lot. I’ve worked all over the country, which is one of my favorite things about being an actor. I’ve worked in Waxahachie, Texas, I’ve worked in Buffalo, New York, I’ve worked in Toronto a million times, in Vancouver, LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Arkansas, so I’ve gotten to learn about a lot of places.
Matthew, you’re in your 60s now. Is it a significant milestone for you? Have you hit much of a mid-life crisis, or is this just another decade, another birthday?
Well, I think my mid-life crisis is supposed to be behind me now. (Laughs) I don’t know, I don’t feel particularly, I mean, being 58 stinks too, you know? There are some good things. I feel a little more settled, not quite as frantic, hopefully, as I was. I think that when you get to this age, you start to be a little more… I just want to have good health to tell you the truth and I feel very lucky so far. But Sarah Jessica and my kids are alright, those are my big worries. I don’t have a great philosophy about being 60, you know? It’s kind of scary when you think about it, but what are you going to do? It happens to everybody.
Check out Matthew Broderick in the upcoming Netflix limited series Painkiller and in the new movie No Hard Feelings , co-starring Jennifer Lawrence.
Photograph by David J. Schwartz - Pics On Route 66
Aroad as long lived and storied as Route 66 carries tales of all cuts along its sprawling expanse. Stories of iconic landmarks and of roadside attractions that evoke warm smiles. But of course, it also carries its share of ghost stories, too; places being slowly lost to time. Hidden away 10 miles west of Rolla, Missouri, just off of I-44 to its south, we find one such fading ghost of Route 66’s bygone past.
It was the mid 1920s and Route 66 was now more than an idea. It was the future. And one stretch of long road that ran through nearby Rolla was brimming with opportunity. Enter Emil Phillip Gasser. Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, Gasser constructed the eponymously named Gasser Tourist Court in the 1930s with its six cabins, a gas station, and a novelty shop. Running the location until the early 1950s, Gasser’s time with the location didn’t generate much buzz or renown, ending with a decision to sell the business to his nephew and his wife, Fred and Vernelle Gasser, and move on with his life while the new owners expanded their new business.
Adding six more cabins, a new restaurant, a petting zoo of all things, and the front office building with the recognizable ‘MOTEL’ painted on the side gabling, Fred and Vernelle did all they could to make their new home a place worth visiting on America’s new Main Street. Unfortunately, Vernelle’s Motel (renamed for Fred’s wife in a move to rebrand) would face the first in a long line of difficulties with the expansion of Route 66 in 1957. Widened to four lanes, this expansion unfortunately meant that a reduction of the motel’s property was needed. The gas station, the petting zoo, and a number of the motel cabins all came down to allow for more asphalt paving. That though was only the first of many changes at Vernelle’s, and like many other businesses along this leg of Route 66, the family-owned venue would have to work overtime to try and stay afloat.
“This particular area of the Ozarks, all of the alignments are like spaghetti, or a maze,” said Joe Sonderman, a member of the Route 66 Association in Missouri. “It’s impossible to put it all together because the engineers have been trying to tame this section of the road since the day it went in. As a result of that, any business that had anything to do with trying to survive on this section of the road not only had to deal with the vagaries of being out in the country, but it had to deal with relying on the roadway, while at the same time being doomed to perpetual change because of it.”
With this loss of property and coming changes likely to continue, the Gassers decided to move on. Fred and Vernelle remained local by moving into nearby Rolla to work another business in their possession: the Colonial Village in the town’s north end. However, to keep Vernelle’s going, they sold
the business to the Goodridge family of nearby Newburg, Missouri. Vernelle’s Motel was not alone in being affected as they were. Just down the road was John’s Modern Cabins, another business that had to move and eventually shut down due to the shifting courses of the roads. The Totem Pole Trading Post had to relocate from its original location to nearby Rolla to survive.
The year 1968 would then see the stretch of Route 66 that served the motel replaced by I-44, forcing the restaurant to close to accommodate the new road. The final nail to Vernelle’s coffin would come almost forty years later in 2006. I-44 moved from its then location right in front of Vernelle’s, to the north on the other side of a thicket of woods that made the motel no longer easily visible from the road. Holding out as long as it could manage in this hidden away spot, the motel unfortunately closed its doors for the last time in 2016 when the owner, Ed Goodridge, suffered health complications that prevented him from continuing to run the simple, rustic location.
Amazingly, the shifting river of asphalt moving through Missouri just could not settle in one place that worked for everyone. Especially the stretch of Route 66, and later I-44, that runs from St. Louis to Fort Leonard Wood in Pulaski County. In one place the road would curve too much to try and get through the odd lay of the land, and in nearly every other place they tried to lay pavement, the road was unusually too steep. Yet, on they continued, trying to settle the road down in a place that would function well for the people of Missouri. “That road, that one in particular, almost more than any other stretch of 66, except maybe the Cajon Pass in California, has been moved more than any other stretch. That is the most complicated piece of Missouri and probably, if not the most, the second most in the entire 2400 miles [of Route 66],” remarked Sonderman.
Today, Vernelle’s Motel still stands, hidden away from the road with its restored sign and giant arrow advertising budget rates, swallowed up by leafy foliage. A larger billboard nearby faded and in disrepair, desperately trying to draw customers that won’t be able to bed down for the night there anymore; its doors have long closed. Goodridge, passed away in early 2022, leaving ownership to his son Dwayne, and future ownership is itself a mystery waiting to be solved. Rumors of the place going up for sale manifested around the time an estate sale to sell off the remaining loose items of the property was announced in September of 2022, but no further word has come of what will happen.
Vernelle’s Motel is now another in a long series of ghosts to appear in the life of America’s Main Street; a mysterious place with an intriguing story that unfortunately didn’t survive into the modern age, like so many other places along Route 66.
“In telling the story of his African family’s journey on Route 66, Brennen Matthews has made an important contribution to the legacy of the highway. He offers both a new voice and a new look at the Mother Road.”
—from the foreword by Michael Wallis, New York Times bestselling author of Route 66: The Mother Road
“Hop in and buckle up. Brennen Matthews’s Miles to Go is a ride you won’t soon forget.”
—Richard Ratay, author of Don’t Make Me Pull Over! An Informal History of the
Family Road Trip“Miles to Go awakens fond memories of my many road trips by car and Greyhound bus along the ‘Mother Road,’ Route 66!”
—Martin Sheen
“In Miles to Go, we don’t just drive the highway looking out the window. We stop, interact with people, and learn things we were not expecting. . . . This Route 66 journey doesn’t just immerse us in the sights, sounds, and experiences of the road. As guests on the journey, we’re encouraged to think about what it means to live in America and be an American.”
—Bill Thomas, chairman of the Route 66 Road Ahead Partnership
Miles to Go is the story of a family from Africa in search of authentic America along the country’s most famous highway, Route 66. Traveling the scenic byway from Illinois to California, they come across a fascinating assortment of historical landmarks, partake in quirky roadside attractions, and meet more than a few colorful characters.
Brennen Matthews, along with his wife and their son, come face-to-face with real America in all of its strange beauty and complicated history as the family explores what many consider to be the pulse of a nation. Their unique perspective on the Main Street of America develops into a true appreciation for what makes America so special. By joining Matthews and his family on their cross-country adventure, readers not only experience firsthand the sights and sounds of the road, but they are also given the opportunity to reflect on American culture and its varied landscapes. Miles to Go is not just a travel story but a tale of hopes, ambitions, and struggles. It is the record of an America as it once was and one that, in some places, still persists.
VISIT AMAZON.COM AND ORDER A COPY OF MILES TO GO NOW AND JOIN BRENNEN MATTHEWS AND HIS FAMILY AS THEY SET OUT TO DISCOVER AMERICA ALONG HISTORIC ROUTE 66
Experience America and Route 66 through a lens never seen before.
Acentury ago, Los Angeles’ northeast suburbs were tiny towns amid sprawling citrus groves. But even then, developers and city officials knew that change would come fast and hard, especially once new highways connecting far-flung points of the country would start shuttling travelers to the west coast in their newly acquired automobiles.
It was 1925 and sights were set on building an elaborate hotel in Monrovia along Foothill Boulevard, soon to be Route 66. While this street served the antecedent National Old Trails Highway, travel along this transcontinental corridor was slim at best. While U.S. Highway 66 was assigned in 1926 to the Foothills corridor, it was not until 1928 that California’s portion of the Mother Road was actually sign-posted.
The promise of increasing traffic motivated the developer and City of Monrovia to work together to bring the Aztec Hotel to fruition. Opened in 1926, it became one of the most ornate buildings in the area and remains so today. It’s just that the name was more hype than it was accurate, but those things seldom matter in the quest to attract tourist dollars.
“It was all about marketing,” said Craig Jimenez, Director of Community Development for the City of Monrovia. “Architect Robert B. Stacy-Judd’s passion was Mayan architecture, but when he was trying to get the funding, no one knew Mayan culture very well; however, they knew of the Aztecs. So, he decided to go with that. It was all about marketing and what people would understand.”
Aztec was the safer bet, if only because it was somewhat known. The name stuck and proved to be a wise choice. “At the time the Aztec was built, Monrovia didn’t have a major hotel. There wasn’t a whole lot of lodging in this area,” Jimenez continued.
The hotel was built with 50 rooms and now has 36 rooms and eight studio apartments. The Monrovia Chamber of Commerce raised the funds by selling stocks in the hotel, but only partial financing meant that the planned-for 100 rooms had to be revised. The geometric designs and spires became its signature style and were the inspirations for the Mayan Theatre in Los Angeles, and the (Chateau Avalon Hotel) in
Kansas City. The motif, though, was short-lived, and faded after the 1920s.
Although Route 66 changed courses a few years later, the Aztec remained a popular destination for the time. While the Aztec targeted those early 66 travelers, it also aimed at Los Angelinos going in the other direction. The re-routing ultimately hurt business, though.
“Monrovia was on the way to Palm Springs. If you were coming from Santa Monica, it was a full day’s drive before getting out to Palm Springs,” said Jimenez. While it is hard to fathom such a relatively short distance taking so long today — even in LA traffic — that was a long road trip a century ago.
While the hotel operated more or less continuously throughout its life as either hotel, boarding house, or long-term residence — it is rumored that the basement once housed a speakeasy — ownership changed several times in the 1930s, and it even closed for three years that decade because of insolvency. In the 1980s, new owners spruced it up, and opened the Brass Elephant restaurant, but these efforts failed also.
Things ground to a halt around 2012, when foreclosure caused ownership to change hands once again. Qin Han Chen bought the property and closed it for renovations. “Initially, the plans were to restore it and reopen as a hotel, but it has been very slow,” said Jimenez. “The restaurant is operating, as well as some of the storefronts. Ultimately, our hope is that whatever it is, it is successful. Number one, we want to assure the long-term preservation of the hotel. Number two, we want to find a use that will be economically viable, and number three, we want to find uses that are compatible with the neighborhood.”
The need for a hotel in Monrovia today may be small, considering the many modern conveniences available nearby in Arcadia. Rumors of its haunting add to its attraction, as does it being on the National Register of Historic Places since 1978, but it is impossible to know its future. A quirky historic venue may not pull enough motorists off of the road to make it a viable business, but the Aztec’s uniquely garish appearance still make it a destination that needs to be preserved and protected as a key destination along California’s wonderful stretch of Route 66.
s Gravity Falls villain Bill Cipher once said, “Remember: reality is an illusion.” And you’d do well to keep that in mind during your next trip to Confusion Hill, the real-life location that inspired the hit Disney XD show. Enter this Piercy, California, wonderland where mind-boggling experiences are everyday occurrences, and you’ll begin to question, “Is seeing really believing?”
Confusion Hill, located near Mendocino County’s northern border, is, to put it mildly, as quirky a tourist attraction as you’ll find anywhere. Amid towering redwoods, there’s a lot to experience. “The gravity house and the train ride, those are the two favorites,” owner Carol Campbell noted. But there’s also the World’s Tallest Free-Standing Totem Pole, a 40-foottall structure chainsaw-carved over the span of three months from a dead redwood tree in the parking lot; the iconic Redwood Shoe House, originally a float in a July 4th parade; the Twin Towers trees, a 9/11 memorial; and the Gift Shop of Wonders, jam-packed with redwood souvenirs, hand-carved items, and nameless oddities.
Not only are there plenty of manmade attractions demanding your attention, but Confusion Hill is also situated in the middle of a beautiful redwood forest. “It just smells like the trees and nature. It’s awesome,” said Kai Wada Roath, the tourist attraction’s ambassador. “There’s bears there, there’s a mountain lion, there’s bobcats. There’s chipmunks, there’s squirrels. So you’re in nature as nature gets.”
In years past, the land where Confusion Hill and neighboring tourist attraction The World Famous Tree House now stand belonged to Mignon “Minnie” Stoddard Lilley, a pioneer school teacher born in 1875. Minnie was a homesteader who taught in a one-room schoolhouse in the Andersonia/ Piercy area from 1904 to 1936. Lilley opened the first gift shop in the area, located — rather incredibly — inside the ancient redwood tree which became famous in the 1930s as the Ripley’s Believe-it-or-Not World’s Tallest Home (but later known simply as The World Famous Tree House). Minnie passed away in 1947 and was buried, “according to her wishes, to be amongst her beloved trees for eternity,” reads Confusion Hill’s bronze plaque in her honor.
Confusion Hill keeps Lilley’s legacy alive with both the aforementioned plaque and also a bridge dedicated to the homesteader. Carol said, “[Minnie Stoddard Lilley] went out and pioneered this whole area, and she’s got quite the story. Me and my husband [Doug Campbell — more on him in a couple minutes] worked to get the bridge named after her,” said Carol.
The Minnie Stoddard Lilley Memorial Bridge at Confusion Hill is the south bridge over the south fork of the Eel River. Completed in 2009, it stands 255 feet high, five feet taller than the Golden Gate Bridge. A hundred yards from the south end of “her” bridge stands her mausoleum, the only burial here. “Her
grave is actually right across from the parking lot [of Confusion Hill] in this little redwood grove. When I go there, I always get a broom. I always go and I sweep Minnie’s tomb,” explained Ambassador Kai. “She never lived there, she lived down the street, but there was a redwood grove there that she loved, and that’s where her tomb is.”
After World War II ended, Confusion Hill’s founder George Hudson became fascinated with gravity hills, locations where the surrounding land’s layout makes a downhill slope appear to slant upward. This bewildering phenomenon can be strengthened by building various structures to enhance the illusion. Two of the maybe three dozen of these gravity hills sprinkled across the U.S., the Oregon Vortex and the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot, which opened in 1930 and 1939 respectively, harnessed this anomaly into tourist attractions that featured gravity houses where visitors had baffling experiences in which they were seemingly able to defy gravity. Two years after Minnie Stoddard Lilley’s passing, Hudson concluded his search for his own special piece of land similar to the Mystery Spot and the Oregon Vortex. He purchased the land in Piercy, California, and constructed Confusion Hill’s main attraction, the gravity house. “So that was all that was there at first was the gravity house, and he charged, I think it was a couple of bucks, to get in,” Carol said.
Confusion Hill officially opened to the public in 1949 and quickly became a popular stop for travelers along Highway 101. The unique twist of Confusion Hill in comparison to other gravity houses is that it’s self-guided. “They tour you through theirs,” Carol explained. “[Visitors] said that they really enjoyed ours more because they’re not toured through, and they can go back through and try other things.” Featured exhibits within the gravity house allow you to watch water float uphill, hang from a pole and feel gravity pull your feet to the north, and sit in a chair that is nearly impossible to stand up from without grabbing a nearby bar for support.
It’s enough to make a person wonder: What kind of force is at play in the gravity house? “Doug, [Campbell, Carol’s late husband], his famous quote was, ‘We claim nuttin’.’ And the whole thing, the whole shtick is, ‘Is seeing believing?’ Doug didn’t want to have just one single claim. He wanted to make sure that everyone was open-minded,” Ambassador Kai answered. “The only thing I will say, 100%, is that it is not an optical illusion.”
Doug created a sign listing the seven theories of the gravity house, ranging from a buried alien computer (Carol’s personal favorite) to a multidimensional door or a vortex where time slows down (Ambassador Kai’s preferred theory). “I think it’s funny. Because I’m like, if you were gonna go to a vortex, it’s more relaxing to go to one in the redwoods than the Bermuda Triangle,” Ambassador Kai added.
“It is most likely just an optical illusion,” said cartographer Mitch Adelson, offering a different explanation. “A gravity hill is a place where a slight downhill slope appears to be an uphill slope due to the layout of the surrounding land. They can be quite disconcerting. Taking a closer look, or using surveying equipment, will show that the hill does indeed slope downward. It is easy to build houses and other things that can enforce that optical illusion.”
As time passed after Confusion Hill’s grand opening, Hudson’s attraction continued to grow, adding the Gift Shop of Wonders and the Mountain Train Ride in the 1950s. The
30-minute miniature train ride employed a switchback system in which the train follows a zig-zag pattern, moving forward and then backward to gain altitude.
“The train ride has this amazing outdoor logging museum, if you can call it that,” said Ambassador Kai. “They have all sorts of crazy logging equipment… And so the conductor will stop and tell you the story of all this, all the logging that happened.” The train once had its own notorious train robber. “When Doug was alive, he would actually stop and rob the train because he’s such a lover of old Black Bart stagecoach robberies. Whenever he was going to rob the train, he would call the sheriff’s department and give them a heads up that he was going to shoot this black powder pistol.”
Confusion Hill’s founder, George Hudson, passed away in the late 1980s. “He had three stepchildren, sons, that he willed the
place to after he passed away,” Carol explained. “They didn’t live here, but they would come and visit, and they always had somebody to manage it. It did start going downhill a little bit.” Luckily, Doug and Carol Campbell, along with Doug’s brother Don, purchased Confusion Hill in 1999 and restored it to its former glory. “My husband and I really reinvented it because it had been really rundown, and people love this place. You know, they think of it as theirs because it’s been here so many years — 72 years this year for the gravity house.”
So how did the Campbell brothers plus Doug’s wife Carol come across Confusion Hill? “We tried to get the [World Famous] treehouse around the corner, but somebody else bought it. And then when we [were] just viewing the treehouse, we saw this place, and it had a ‘for sale’ sign,” Carol said.
“[Doug] had quite a personality. He put a lot of himself into this place. And I’m the helper, I do the books.” After Don passed away, Doug and Carol named a tree near the playground “Big Brother” in his honor. “When my husband was alive… He’d drive me down a lot of times in the train to the shop, or drive me back from the shop after the day’s done. Riding the train back and forth to work, I mean, nobody gets to do that,” Carol added.
Kai Wada Roath (better known as Ambassador Kai) came into the picture around the year 2000, meeting the Campbells a year after they purchased Confusion Hill.
“I’m just a promoter and lover of roadside attractions, so right when I met him, I became like best friends with [him],” Kai explained. “You’d go over there and visit him, and he’d have a cheap cigar in his mouth and
a cowboy hat, and he’d pull out a can of smoked oysters and you’d be shooting the breeze with him. He passed away a few years ago. That’s how I inherited this funny title of the ambassador.”
Now, Ambassador Kai runs Confusion Hill’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, regularly sharing both current and vintage photos and promoting the seven theories of the gravity house. He takes care of odd jobs around the property, purchases fun machines like a fortune-teller for guests to enjoy, and searches for unique items to fill the gift shop. “I’ve tried to make things and buy things for them to sell in the gift shop. Some were better than others. I mean, Confusion Hill dowsing rods, those didn’t really sell, but they looked awesome. But the T-shirts sell great.”
For a decade, the Campbells ran Confusion Hill together quite successfully. But in 2009, U.S. Highway 101 (also known as Redwood Highway) was realigned due to frequent mudslides, and it bypassed the attraction. For 60 years, Confusion Hill had reaped the benefits of its convenient location along the heavily-traveled highway, but after the bypass, it started to receive fewer and fewer visitors. Doug and Carol needed to find a way to remind people that the odd amusement park even existed, and they found the perfect way to do so one year later.
The couple had lobbied for Confusion Hill to be named a point of historical interest once before, back in 2001,
but their initial proposal was rejected. This time, however, the attraction was approved as a California State Point of Historical Interest. The qualification was given mainly due to the atmosphere and structure of Confusion Hill remaining mostly unchanged since the late 1940s, when it first opened. “It’s a little rough around the edges, but it adds character. It’s just a part of America’s past that’s still present,” noted Ambassador Kai.
Also in 2010, Huell Howser of the PBS television program California’s Gold stopped by one day, and the attraction ended up being featured in an episode of the show. “[Huell Howser] went around finding all these obscure things in California, and he’d talk about them. He had this great twang in his voice. I finally got a hold of him to go up to Confusion Hill, and it was a real big highlight for Doug and Carol to have him there. And I think a lot of people wanted to go there after watching Huell Howser’s California’s Gold,” Ambassador Kai explained.
But Confusion Hill’s spot in the American pantheon of gravity hills was really cemented in 2012, when the pilot episode of the Disney XD animated series Gravity Falls debuted. The series creator, Alex Hirsch, has admitted that Confusion Hill and the surrounding area were a huge source of inspiration for the show, which is often referred to as a love letter to roadside attractions. It follows twins Dipper and Mabel and their adventures with their great-uncle Grunkle Stan in the strange and mysterious town of Gravity Falls. “Right across the street from Confusion Hill is the Redwoods River Resort, and they have that A-frame house [from Gravity Falls]. That’s the entrance to the gift shop. And then I think
the one-log house that’s up the road, there’s a one-log house in Gravity Falls. One of the characters on Gravity Falls [Grunkle Stan] resembles Big John, who’s one of the two train conductors,” added Ambassador Kai.
“Everybody connects us to Gravity Falls,” Carol agreed. “It’s really helped our business a lot.” The series ran on Disney XD from 2012 through 2016, but thanks to streaming services, it still has many viewers today. Many Gravity Falls fans have made the trek to check out the real-life Gravity Falls, and they weren’t disappointed. Not only did they get to experience everything Confusion Hill has to offer, but after the series ended, creator Alex Hirsch installed a statue of Bill Cipher, the series villain, onto a tree at Confusion Hill. Seeing Bill Cipher, along with Confusion Hill’s collection of signed Gravity Falls items, has been an unforgettable experience for many fans.
Sadly, Doug passed away in September of 2017, leaving his wife Carol and good friend Ambassador Kai to take over Confusion Hill. A plaque created in Doug’s honor reads, “Husband, father, grandfather, rancher, fisherman, artist, train engineer and notorious train robber. He was an amazing entrepreneur with a pioneer spirit.”
Just a few years later, the coronavirus pandemic led to an unexpectedly heartwarming development for Confusion Hill. Due to California’s stay-at-home order in March of 2020, the attraction was forced to close its doors to the public. Ambassador Kai created a GoFundMe campaign, an online crowdfunding initiative, for Confusion Hill. “Confusion Hill depends on visitors to survive,” he said in the fundraiser’s description. “With no idea when they will be able to re-open, all they can do is stay closed and lose money like so many others.” The goal of the GoFundMe was $9,000, which would get Confusion Hill through three months without visitors.
But then, Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch shared the GoFundMe on Twitter, encouraging the show’s fans to save the real-life Gravity Falls—and they did! After only three days, the fundraiser had met its goal and continued to exceed it. Hirsch even donated $1,000 himself. “I would say 80% of the people who donated were people who were Gravity Falls fans who had never even been there,” Ambassador Kai said. Thanks to the successful GoFundMe, Confusion Hill was able to make some much-needed repairs and continue to pay its employees until it re-opened on June 12, 2020.
Today, Carol continues to uphold her husband’s legacy while running Confusion Hill along with her small staff. “We’ve put a lot of ourselves into this place, and it’s an old place, and it’s hard to keep going, but I’ve made it my own now… There’s not many places like here anymore,” she said.
Confusion Hill “has a comfort,” Ambassador Kai added. “You walk past the smells of chili cheese fries and [see] people on their vacation. You walk in this gift shop where it… smells like redwood, and, like souvenirs in the 1970s, I think that’s the whole thing, there’s a whole ‘nother world if people stopped and took the scenic route. If they stopped and smelled the flowers. If they took a break from their screens.”
Next time you’re traveling U.S. Highway 101, do take the exit to Confusion Hill, and as Mabel of Gravity Falls says, “Stay curious, stay weird, stay kind, and don’t let anyone ever tell you [that] you aren’t smart or brave or worthy enough.” Is seeing really believing? You can find out for yourself — if you’re brave enough — at Confusion Hill!
Photograph by Rhys Martin
In Oklahoma’s northeastern reaches, known to some as Green Country, a particular body of water flowing through Creek County once sat stubbornly in the way of travelers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Refusing to be impeded by such trivial things in their desire to continue forming and expanding what was then known as the Ozark Trail, a bridge was constructed in 1921, just west of Sapulpa, in an effort to span Rock Creek. More than a hundred years later, Bridge #18 or Rock Creek Bridge, still stands and holds a truly unique honor among other Oklahoma bridges.
“With [Bridge #18] being built in 1921, it is currently the oldest [Parker] through truss bridge on Route 66 in Oklahoma that still exists,” said Rhys Martin, President of the Oklahoma Route 66 Association. “You have some other old bridges like it near Oklahoma City and Chelsea, but those are from later in the 1920s, so as it stands right now, it’s the oldest bridge of its kind on Route 66 in the state.”
Sitting less than ten miles from Main Street Sapulpa, the Parker through truss bridge was constructed by Concrete and Steel Construction Company, a New York firm, in the most compelling model of its time. With its improved design and composition of connected steel beams, the bridge could span the wider and deeper stretches of water, allowing for a more direct route across the creek. This type of bridge was used extensively along Route 66 for large bridges during the first quarter of the 20th Century, until the beginning of World War II, when newer and better designs were developed. However, Bridge #18 had a unique and rather unusual feature; instead of the usual timber, concrete, or metal, this bridge featured red brick decking across its roadbed.
“They put the brick down in 1925 when that section of the road was paved and that was one year before [Route 66] came along, so it’s nice that it has pretty much maintained its historic aesthetic that entire time,” remarked Martin. And thanks to its slick new brick deck that drew attention to the crossing, it wasn’t long into the life of Bridge #18 before it was incorporated into a new series of roadways in 1926, established by the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads, known as Route 66.
Incorporated into the Mother Road like so many other roads and bridges, Bridge #18 served as a steadfast and reliable way across Rock Creek for 26 years before a new alignment for Route 66 was rerouted nearby in 1952, diverting traffic away. Still, the bridge served as a crossing for those who preferred its weathered and storied steel trusses and brick deck, over the new, concrete construction.
With modern vehicles getting bigger and heavier, and traffic more frequent, the old bridge could not quite hold up to the new motoring demands and in 2013, it was closed to vehicular traffic, but re-opened two years letter in 2015 with some restrictions to ease the strain on the aging structure: a four-ton weight limit and a height restriction of 7-feet and 2 inches. But, even with these regulations, the growing traffic volume, higher loads, and harsher environment was too much. Nearly a century of uninterrupted service unfortunately drew to a close in 2018.
“[Bridge #18] is currently closed to traffic,” said Martin. “It would fail an inspection, they’d close it, do some minor repairs, then reopen it to traffic with pretty strict limitations. In 2018, they had another inspection that it failed, and a bypass road was built on the opposite side. So now, it’s probably going to be closed for the foreseeable future until [the City of Sapulpa] figures out what they’re going to do with the area.”
Now the old Rock Creek Bridge sits in the same place it has stood since its creation, unused but hardly forgotten by those who still value it. A plaque at the foot of the bridge commemorates its history and contribution to the Mother Road. In 1995, the bridge was honored with its own place in the National Register of Historic Places.
“Since there’s now an access road on the opposite of the reopened TeePee Drive-In, they aren’t going to reopen it in the near term,” continued Martin regarding the bridge’s current day status. “You can still park next to it and explore the bridge on foot, but cars can’t drive across it. The City of Sapulpa has a plan to create a roadside park there for the [Route 66] Centennial that incorporates the bridge.”
Travelers seeking to see the bridge that served this leg of America’s Main Street for the first 26 years of its life can make their way across the bridge on foot and tread where so many others have, while basking in the history soaked in the rusted steel beams and worn-out brick deck.
With the sheer number of bridges that dot the landscape of America, well over 600,000, it can be easy to think that a few forgotten bridges here and there is hardly a loss. Yet, every bridge has a story. Every beam, stone, and plank carries within it the history of the U.S., a nation of travelers looking for greatness just on the other side of an impeding waterway, and down Route 66, just outside of Sapulpa, Oklahoma, silently sits a tiny echo of the past that while now long over, still rightly deserves to be remembered.
By
Hinckley
Jim
Photographs by Efren Lopez/Route66Images
ulti-generation family businesses on Route 66 are revered, with tribute being paid to both the founder’s hard work and bootstrapping ability, as well as to the next generations who hung on by any means they could to the business bearing their family name. But more often than not, the iconic business is just that — a single business.
But throughout Mohave County, Arizona, one family managed to put their stamp on multiple businesses at various points, including the Goldroad Garage, Cool Springs Station, Dunton Motors, and the iconic Mr. D’z Route 66 Diner. Behind the facades of these pillars of Route 66 are businesses linked to more than 90 years of Route 66 history. And tying them together are the Duntons, a family that has a centurylong history of providing service to travelers on the National Old Trails Road and Route 66.
The story begins with N.R. Dunton. “He was born in North Dakota, but the family moved to the Spokane area where N.R. found a job picking apples at a young age. Then, the family moved to Los Angeles where he worked as a teamster delivering freight, met Thelma McCabe, and married,” explained Scott Dunton, proprietor of Dunton Motors in Kingman, Arizona. “In the early 1920s, N.R. set out for White Hills, a mining town north of Chloride, Arizona, something to do with a job that required an experienced teamster.”
N.R. staked everything on the job. But he and his wife arrived in White Hills only to learn that the fellow he was to work for had been arrested. Hearing about another job at a garage in Goldroad — a town established by mining companies on the National Old Trails Road, between Sitgreaves Pass and the town of Oatman — he decided to try his hand there until he could make enough money to get back to Los Angeles.
But N.R. found gold of sorts in Goldroad. “He saw opportunity in the traffic that was passing by the garage and when the owner said he wanted to sell, N.R. went back to L.A. and borrowed $4,000 from the McCabes, his in-laws, at 12-percent interest,” Scott said. “The garage was very profitable, and, in a year, he had paid back the loan.”
N.R. Dunton next surfaced at what would become a true Route 66 icon — an early station, travel stop, and towing service that took advantage of a natural spring where American Indians and then Spanish and American explorers had once stopped to quench their thirst.
“To profit on traffic headed west over Sitgreaves Pass, N.R. Dunton built Cool Springs about 1925. It was a gas station with two open bays under a roof for vehicle repairs,” said Ned Leuchtner, current owner of Cool Springs. “His nephew, Roy
MDunton, [once] told me that his uncle made more money selling water than gas. At that time gas was about 19 cents per gallon. But during the summer, water could be sold for $1.00 per gallon.”
N.R. divested himself of Cool Springs in the early 1930s by selling it to Tom and Mary Walker, who added a café, the stonework facade, a garage, and cabins. In an interesting and odd footnote to the story, “Neither N.R. Dunton or the Walkers actually owned the property. It was owned by the Mohave County School District. It was finally purchased by Nancy Schoenherr in 1960, when the county determined the property was ‘not needed’ for school use,” Leuchtner explained.
After selling Cool Springs, N.R. Dunton focused his attention on the development of the Goldroad Garage. An advertisement published in the Kingman Miner during the summer of 1937 read, “Goldroad Garage — N.R. Dunton — Trucking — Mining Machinery — School Bus Lines — Authorized Distributor Standard Oil Stations, Inc.”
N.R. was always quick to capitalize on opportunity. In his 1946 A Guide Book To Highway 66, Jack Rittenhouse noted, “For eastbound cars which cannot make the Gold Hill grade, a filling station in Goldroad offers a tow truck which will haul your car to the summit. At last inquiry their charge was $3.50 but may be higher.” N.R. also offered the services of a driver for the traveler intimidated by the grades and curves. After 1938 that driver, and the operator of the tow truck, was often Roy Dunton, Scott’s father.
Roy Dunton was born on August 3, 1921, in North Port, Washington, near the Canadian border. The family moved to Spokane when Roy was three. His brother, Cline, and sister Laverne all worked to support the family during the Great Depression. Roy had two paper routes and then worked as a dishwasher and busboy before moving up in his teens to jobs as a bartender and part time hotel manager.
Roy was just 17 when N.R. drove his new Chrysler Airflow to Spokane and offered his young nephew a job. Aside from pumping gas, performing minor repairs, and the towing service, Roy would drive a customer’s car to Snell’s Summit Station at the crest of Sitgreaves Pass. Years later, Roy often reminisced about those days and quipped that at Snell’s, he would flirt with the owner’s daughter, grab an ice cream, and then walk back to Goldroad.
A tragic accident in the garage almost ended Roy’s part in this story. “He was mounting a truck tire with split rims when it blew up. It almost killed him,” said Scott. “The rim hit him in the face, destroyed his nose, and broke most of his teeth. An ambulance took him to Kingman for the first of several surgeries, and then he spent years driving back and forth to Phoenix getting his teeth rebuilt by dentist Dr. Wes Biddulph. That is how he met Herb [Biddulph], Wes’s brother.” (More on Herb Biddulph in a bit.)
Finally, Roy recovered and joined the Navy in World War II, attending Sonar Anti-Sub School. He first served on the U.S.S. Harrison DD573, a destroyer, in the North Atlantic. He later transferred to the U.S.S. Seid, another destroyer, in the South Pacific and then, ironically, to a mine sweeper numbered U.S.S. 66.
After the war, he returned to Arizona and picked up where he left off working at the Goldroad Garage for N.R., but things had changed in his absence.
In January 1940, before the war, an article published in the Kingman Miner had carried a headline that read, “U.S. 66 Brings More Than A Million Visitors to Arizona during 1939.” After the war, with the suspension of gas rationing, traffic along Route 66 was soon eclipsing the record set in 1939.
But Goldroad was a company town. Mining operations had been suspended in 1942, and most employees were transferred to mines in Silver City, New Mexico. Arizona laws required mining companies to pay taxes on buildings, whether in use or abandoned. And so, the company began razing buildings, selling others to bidders with the stipulation they be torn down, and liquidating equipment.
“After the war the company resumed operations with a skeleton crew, and then shut down permanently,” Scott said. “N.R. saw the opportunity and bought much of the town for $5,000. He also bought a lot of equipment that he sold to
mining company investors and speculators in Los Angeles.” But N.R.’s next endeavor would be even more ambitious.
Back in 1912, the same year that Arizona became a state, a Ford dealership was established across from the railroad depot on Front Street (later known as Andy Devine Avenue). But by the 1940s, the facility was outdated, and there was no room for expansion. So, after WWII, Taylor-Owen built a new dealership next to the Kimo Shell and Cafe. In 1946, N.R. purchased the facility with its modern showroom, parts department, and maintenance department.
“In 1949 or 1950, Herb Biddulph and Roy bought out N.R. and started Biddulph and Dunton Motors,” Scott relayed. “Biddulph began delving into politics, and served as Kingman’s first mayor after the city incorporated in 1952. Sometime around 1957 or 1958, my dad [Roy] bought out Biddulph and established Dunton Motors. And in 1957, my dad got the Edsel franchise, the first in northern Arizona. There was a big parade as an introduction and the Mohave County Sheriff’s Department placed an order.”
The story of the Edsel and its shortcomings are well documented. For Roy Dunton, the litany of problems provided fodder for a story that he enjoyed telling years later.
“A doctor in Flagstaff was really wanting an Edsel and had called my dad,” Scott said. “When we got the first shipment, Roy called the doctor and he drove to Kingman to pick up
his car. Within five minutes of completing the contract, a truck came down the alley and rear ended the car.” The doctor stayed with the Duntons for a few days until repairs could be made. But as he made the trip back to Flagstaff on Route 66, the transmission went out on the Ash Fork grade. Shortly before the demise of Edsel, Roy dropped that line and returned to selling Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury vehicles. “In about 1962 or 1963, our service manager was driving a new Lincoln down Route 66. Our office manager was in the car. The front end fell apart and there was a bad accident,” Scott said. The office manager was killed, and the service manager was severely injured. Lawsuits ensued, and the Lincoln division advised Roy to get an attorney. And Roy eventually dropped Ford and converted the dealership to Chevrolet and General Motors.
As Scott grew up, he worked at the Dunton dealership. In 1972, he came back from college and went to work as a sales manager. Then in 1980, the Duntons leased the dealership property to Mohave County and built a new dealership on Stockton Hill Road.
“With me as a partner, Roy started Dunton & Dunton in Bullhead City. In about 1990, we started rebuilding our old [Kingman] dealership as Dunton Motors Dream Machines,” Scott said. “And in 1991, we bought the old Kimo Cafe and Shell station next door.”
With construction realigning Route 66 in downtown Kingman in 1937, businesses began to shift to new locations to stay on the highway. Local Shell Oil distributor Oscar Osterman moved his service station and Kingman Cafe from Beale Street to a new building on Front Street (later renamed Andy Devine Avenue). A few years later, the eatery was renamed the Kimo Cafe and Osterman’s wife, Clara, a locally-renowned cook and former Harvey Girl, took over the management. In the mid-1950s, Charlie McCarthy, an experienced station operator and Kingman mayor, leased the station. Then, in 1991, father-and-son team Roy and Scott Dunton, who by then owned Dunton Motors next door, purchased the cafe and station.
“At the old Kimo, the only part that was a restaurant was the narrow section when you walked in the front door. Everything from there to the east was a gas station and garage. We did a full remodel and enclosed the pump island. The idea was to create a 50s style diner. A lot of my mom’s
recipes ended up on the menu,” Scott explained. “We changed the name to Mr. D’z Route 66 Diner. Of course, the “D” in the name was a reference to Roy Dunton.”
In 2006, Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King put the diner, and its signature root beer, in the national spotlight during a segment of Oprah and Gayle’s Big Adventure. They stopped in for lunch and enjoyed the root beer so much that several cases were purchased for the studio audience on a future program.
“The idea for the root beer came from my family’s trip to the World’s Fair in 1962. I always remembered how it tasted like it was filled with cream. My dad said it was the Rutherford family root beer, a tradition in Spokane,” explained Scott. “So, when we bought the Kimo and decided to build the diner, [we] tracked down the Rutherfords. As it turned out, they had sold the business with the formula to A&W.” Faced with possible business limitations due to a link with A&W, the Duntons instead found a company called Mutual Flavors that could create the right creamy flavor to produce Mr. D’z Old Fashioned Creamy Caramel Root Beer.
Despite their satisfaction in founding Mr. D’z, more than 20 years ago, the diner was leased to Armando and Michelle Jimenez, Las Vegas restaurant owners, although the Duntons stayed actively involved in its development and promotion.
Roy Dunton passed away on September 4, 2016, but his legacy lives on in Mr. D’z Route 66 Diner, at Dunton Motors Dream Machines, and in the work of the Route 66 Association of Kingman Arizona, which Scott was instrumental in founding.
The association offices are at Dunton Motors Dream Machines where relics of the Route 66 renaissance are on display along with artifacts from the highway’s history, the Dunton family’s long association with the iconic double six, and political memorabilia that attests to Roy’s decades long involvement with the Republican Party.
A sign from the Goldroad Garage hangs in the garage. A diorama of Mr. D’z Route 66 Diner created by the late Dutch artist Willem Bor, a gift from his widow, Monique, and the Dutch Route 66 Association is displayed atop a vintage Coca-Cola machine. Restored gas pumps, garage equipment, and dealership memorabilia are links to more than 90 years of business along Route 66.
Mr. D’z Route 66 Diner is well known to Route 66 enthusiasts throughout the world through countless selfies, and it is a destination for legions of Route 66 travelers and a favored lunch stop for companies that provide Route 66 tours.
And next door is Dunton Motors Dream Machines, a combination classic car museum and sales facility. Its everchanging display of colorful hotrods and classic cars in a mid1960s showroom that fronts on Route 66, mixed with relics linked to Route 66 and Kingman history, is a popular attraction.
Roy’s son, Scott, recently acquired Campa’s Oasis, a 1930s era service station, café, and roadhouse along the pre-1952 alignment of Route 66 west of Kingman. Tragically Scott’s plans to give it a new lease on life as a Route 66 attraction were cut short. He died unexpectedly on March 16, 2023.
And so now the torch has been passed to Alek Dunton, Scott’s grandson. And so, a new generation is assuring that the Dunton’s Route 66 legacy will continue to that highway’s centennial and beyond.
Citrullus Lanatus; a flowering vine plant that produces large, spherical to oval fruit with a hard, green rind and a sweet, juicy, pink or red pulp that is high in water content. It originated in arid climes on the Eurasian landmass before making its way across to the new world with explorers settling a newly discovered America. No one could have predicted that this fruit, that we know today as watermelon, would have a significant place in history, let alone a replica erected in its honor on the Mother Road.
Found halfway between Springfield and Bloomington in the state of Illinois, is the town of Lincoln, famed for being the first town in the country named after the man who would go on to become the 16th President of the United States: Abraham Lincoln.
“The whole reason Lincoln was founded was because when the steam engine became popular. There was Springfield and Bloomington, but the steam engine needed to be refilled every 30 miles or so. There’s about 60 miles there, so they needed to split the distance,” said Alice Roate, Executive Director of the Logan County Tourism Bureau. “So that’s how Lincoln, Illinois, came to be. Abraham Lincoln helped secure bringing the steam train through and he also helped draw up the plots for the town when it became time to incorporate the town.”
But how does the watermelon come into play? Largely owing their town’s existence to him, residents asked Honest Abe to christen their town. In his usual self-deprecation, Lincoln could only joke, “Nothing with the name of Lincoln ever amounted to much.”
On August 27th, 1853, the day that the first lots were being sold, Lincoln arrived in the new town and offered a brief speech before he took his pocket knife, sliced open a watermelon, squeezed the juice into a tin cup, and pouring it on the ground, officially declared, “Therefore, in your presence and hearing, I now christen this town site. Its name is Lincoln and soon to be named the permanent capital of Logan County. I have also prepared a feast for the occasion.”
As it would turn out, the choice of the watermelon was not purely happenstance. Lincoln had arranged for a farmer to bring a wagon full of watermelons to the event to feed the
revelers. And to kick off this feast, Lincoln decided to share the christening melon with the youngest American present at the event, one John S. Stevens, just 13-years-old at the time. Stevens would later recount the details of the event, preserving a slice of American history and how a slice of watermelon factored into it.
In 1964, 11 years after the town’s centennial celebration in 1953, the Kiwanis, Rotary, and Lions Club banded together to erect a monument to commemorate the quirky christening cornerstone of the town’s history. A two-foot long brightly painted watermelon slice, made of steel, known as the Lincoln Watermelon Monument, stands close to the site of the christening at what is now known as Centennial Park. Of course, Lincoln’s story as it pertains to the town hardly ends with a piece of fruit. On November 21, 1860, PresidentElect Lincoln, on his way to Chicago, stopped to give a speech in Lincoln.
“There was a letter [Abraham Lincoln] wrote in 1859 to a publisher when he was practicing law [on] one of his many afternoons after a court case was over in downtown Lincoln asking for the Lincoln-Douglas debates to be published,” said Ron Keller, Director and Curator of the Lincoln Heritage Museum in Lincoln. “The only reason I could surmise that he would’ve wanted the Lincoln-Douglas debates to be published was because he was considering a run for the presidency in 1860. So, I would say there is an argument to be made that, in some ways, he began his presidential campaign in Lincoln, Illinois. And that was just one block away from the christening site.”
And in a full circle moment for the town, on May 3, 1865, as Lincoln’s funeral train procession crossed through Illinois towards his hometown, it fittingly made a stop in the small American town that bore his name.
Today, the Lincoln Watermelon Monument stands just steps away from the train station that signaled the birth of a small town in Illinois. It is but one in a long series of quirky roadside monuments to seemingly tiny but significant moments of American history.
Photographs by David J. Schwartz - Pics On Route 66
oute 66 has a great many places to see and people to meet. The historic highway’s legacy, with its plethora of stories and diverse history and landscape, is second to none. The highway truly represents the essence of the great American road trip. But with all of that, there really are only a few true “destinations” that beckon motorists to go out of their way for a visit. And down in Carthage, Missouri sits perhaps the state’s most beloved.
Red Oak II. It’s a place, yes… an idea, one man’s obsession that grew out of the pangs of nostalgia for the town he grew up in, absolutely. Born in 1937, Lowell Davis grew up in the original Red Oak, Missouri, a pre-Depression era Lawrence County village, 20 miles east of the “new” Red Oak II, on what was then the frontier of Missouri. Early records on the original Red Oak community are scant; what is known is that a post office named Red Oak, a church, and a parsonage, were established in the area around 1877.
Lowell’s entire extended family kept shops or lived within the town’s borders; his great, great-grandfather was the first to plow the fertile fields, his grandfather owned the blacksmith shop, and his father, Berton Clayton Davis, and mother, Nell Marie Davis, ran the General Store — the community hub, the back of which served as Lowell’s family home. The town also had a schoolhouse, sawmill, gas station, feed store and barns. The whole family was right there in that little town, a close-knit community where everyone knew everyone, and everyone helped anyone. As a child, Davis loved watching and listening to the various characters that came through the store’s front doors. Then early on, those characters and Lowell’s imagination began to steer him down the road of becoming an artist.
In the 1950s, Davis dropped out of high school, and joined the U.S. Air Force where he flew prop planes. A flying accident gave him a medical discharge and he found himself post war working as an Art Director in advertising and based in Dallas, Texas. Among other projects, Davis began to gain a reputation, and success, working on the cheeky “Sex To Sexty” Magazine, though he did pen his illustrations under Pierre Davis. The pay was good, but city living and Lowell Davis were not made for each other. So, after 13 years he said “adios” to Dallas and in 1974, headed east and purchased Fox Fire Farm, just northeast of Carthage, not far from his hometown of Red Oak. But on his return to Missouri, what he found of his beloved hometown was a faded, almost deserted shell of its former self. Difficult years had taken their toll on the farming community and many of its residents had been forced to move on to larger urban cities. Nothing was as he had remembered it. This is where the new chapter of Davis’s story begins.
Soon after returning, the artist began creating sculptures of life on the farm. He’d recreate the animals and give them a personality, sculpt the farm scenes, creating vignettes that customers could have on their shelves. Fortunately for Davis, he began these farm sculptures right at the upswing of the collectible figurine market and his farm life depictions quickly became a sought-after commodity. The themes in his farm scenes and figures resonated with people, they were reminders of a simpler period, a quieter time.
Nostalgia, not just for “the good ole days” that his farm life figurines depicted, but for his hometown of Red Oak became an obsession for Davis. Now married and with children, he would regularly take his five kids back to Red Oak and explain the history of his family and the town and try to tell stories of what it looked like when he was a kid. He endeavored to take them back in time with his stories and he would get emotional. “He’d say, ‘Your kids aren’t going to be able to see this, it’s all going to fall into the ground and these memories will be gone’,” shared Heather Davis, Lowell’s daughter. “That part really choked him up.”
But Davis had a solution, a plan that would seem insane to many people. He decided to buy a 15-acre field that sat next to his current farm property and try and save his beloved Red Oak by bringing it to this field. “He had to bring the General Store back, he just couldn’t stand to watch it fall apart. I don’t think he intended to move the entire town, it just happened, one building at a time,” explained Heather.
With the success of his collectibles, he had the means, and with access to trucks and labor, he had the resources to move the buildings, one at a time. Davis wanted to surround himself with the memories of the community and family togetherness that he remembered as a child at Red Oak and share those with his children. And so, with each move, the process streamlined, and Davis even brought in buildings that weren’t actually in the original Red Oak. The 1920s Phillips 66 Station, one of the prominent buildings on the property, was along the Mother Road, covered in weeds and falling down, but Davis remembered the brilliant neon that it had in its heyday and brought it to the property to rehabilitate. The 1838 George Hornback cabin, which was used as the first Jasper County courthouse in 1841, the home of Belle Starr, the horse thief and gunslinger, the Dalton House which was moved from Vinita, Oklahoma, and was the home origins of the Dalton Gang brothers, the local church, the Trolley Diner, a Town Hall, and several other businesses and homes are all notable buildings that Lowell rescued from elsewhere. Some people will restore a Mustang or 55 Chevy; Lowell Davis was acquiring, moving and restoring quaint, historic buildings.
For Heather Davis, being on the farm with her siblings was a wonderful way to grow up. During the warmer months, all five kids: April, Heather, Wren, Phillip and Jeb, were given their own paintbrushes and asked to dive into the upkeep and restoration of the buildings. The kids would all marvel whenever a new structure was added to the collection. “When a new building was being added it was so funny to watch it come down the highway. They’d come down real slow, they’d cross under the electrical line, so the workman had a long pole with a V on the end and like, grab that electrical line and walk it to the roof.” They all watched with
excitement as the building was moved across the field and settled onto its new foundation.
Davis would stand there with his pipe in his mouth and hands on his hips, directing the action as everyone watched on. “One of my favorite quotes from my dad about Red Oak II was, ‘Every artist has their masterpiece. This is my masterpiece.’ ”
As an artist, Lowell Davis worked hard and was successful at creating objects that people would love to possess, but that success soon became something that he battled against. The empire that Davis had created for himself to allow for Red Oak II to even exist was the very thing keeping him from being there. He was constantly on tour, flying first class and staying in 5-star hotels. But he hated airports and hated renting cars. All of it was too hectic for the simple Missouri artist. He had left the city years before and hated having to go back. He hated the rat race. It was during this period that Davis built the Leapin Lizard; an old medicine man truck that he converted into his hotel and car all in one. It was also around this time that he wrote his book, “There Ain’t No Memories In First Class.”
As the humble town that he was building took shape, it slowly became a destination of its own. Folks who were collectors, as well as fans of Lowell Davis’s art, flocked to Red Oak II to see the real-life scenes and animals depicted in the figurines on their shelves, in full size three dimension. The Farm Club was a collector fan club of his works, and they would have art festivals at Red Oak II, which brought
a lot of attention to this destination. But rather than the fanfare, it was meeting with visitors, sitting out on his porch, telling stories to people who came to see him, that Davis enjoyed the most.
Regularly being away from his passion project and family, dubious business partners, and a pending divorce from his second wife was darkening his mental state. Add the general day to day upkeep of Red Oak II and Davis was becoming overwhelmed. He felt himself being pulled in every direction but his own, and soon this would lead to a nervous breakdown.
“He wanted a simple life, to see his chickens, sit on the porch and watch thunderstorms roll in. He just couldn’t because he always had to be on tour and it drove him crazy,” recounted Heather. Davis wanted off the carnival ride that he was on. Life on the road and the commitments and responsibilities to others that comes with being successful and having notoriety had taken a toll on him. “He just wanted to be simple, but he couldn’t. Then he and my stepmother ended up getting a divorce. It was a crazy, crazy time, the guy that he put in charge that he trusted the most, to take control of the farm club, and the day-to-day stuff, that guy ended up stealing money from him. And then there was another guy that he really trusted who was trying to steal his wife when he was gone. He freaked out.” So, one day, very calmly, Davis carefully but methodically burned down his studio. He watched it burn with a cup of coffee in his hand and a whole lot of relief in his heart.
This was another transition phase for Lowell Davis and Red Oak II. As part of the divorce, buildings and plots of Red Oak II were sold off to individual owners. This helped
to reduce the upkeep and financial burden. He then began to shift his art focus to creating three-dimensional signs and larger metal sculptures.
With the divorce, bad business partnerships, sale of parts of Red Oak II, and recovering from the weight of his breakdown, Davis was struggling a bit to keep focus and stay motivated. His close friend and owner of Precious Moments, Sam Butcher, offered to take him along on his next trip to the Philippines. While there, Sam introduced him to one of his friends, a woman named Rose. “I was the manager of a finedining Chinese restaurant in the Philippines. I had met and became friends with Sam, and he came in with Lowell on one of his trips, and it was love at first sight,” said Rose Davis. After a brief courtship, Davis brought her to visit Red Oak II and the couple developed a deep bond.
After two years together, on January 10, 2003, Rose’s birthday, the couple officially tied the knot, and Davis adopted her son Aaron. Rose of course knew that Davis was an artist. She had seen his figurines around the house and dusted them off, but the heyday of the figurine business was in the past. It wasn’t until she was taking a local computer class and the teacher told her that she was married to a very famous artist, that it truly sank in. He never bragged about his accomplishments and success to Rose. As time continued, the pair worked together to maintain and add to the Red Oak II property, adding five additional buildings.
While the figurine chapter and fervor was at its end, Red Oak II’s popularity as a true destination continued, but from a different source. By around 2005, it was Route 66 that was generating the tourism now. There was a whole new generation of people coming to Red Oak II, not because of the farm-themed models, but because they could walk through a restored yesteryear. It’s not remanufactured; it’s the original, even if it’s not in its original location. “It’s a 40-year art project if you think about it,” said Jeremy Morris,
the appointed Sheriff of Red Oak II and its newest resident. “It’s historic preservation. It’s a Route 66 attraction, it’s also just a private neighborhood.”
Morris met Davis about 15 years ago when he decided to take action on the many stories that he had heard about this “Route 66 thing” and drive the highway for himself. Red Oak II was a spot that he kept hearing about. It wasn’t “on” the route but was suggested by people “in the know”. In the early 2000s, there weren’t that many guidebooks or materials available and travelers depended on information from multiple sources and people along the way. Davis and Morris met on this inaugural trip, and Lowell showed him around. The ‘living ghost town’ left an impression on him.
Fast forward to 2016 and Morris discovered that there was an opportunity at Red Oak II. “I heard that a place had come open at Red Oak II, all by word-of-mouth, no listing. I contacted Heather and was informed that the Parsonage, right in the middle of town, was for sale. I went and met with Lowell, and it was like a job interview at first, he wanted to make sure that the people who came into his town understood what was going on. He was puffing on his corn cob pipe, like he always did, leering at me over his nose. Well, I started talking about the house he was in, the Belle Starr. I knew a little Belle Starr history, she’s this Carthage bandit queen of the West. She was born in that house. I could tell that he was getting a little excited. Then he looked over at Heather and he gave a nod, like an approving nod,” said Morris.
And that was it. He left a job, and a relationship, and moved to a former brothel in a ghost town. “It was the best decision I’ve ever made.”
Morris is now the unofficial ambassador of Red Oak II. People are invited to stroll around the property, into yards, it’s free to walk around, it’s an art project. However, on rare occasions, people have wandered into an occupied house, which can be awkward. “I was coming out of the shower recently and had forgotten to lock the back door. I had my towel on and I heard some commotion in the back, and I thought it was the cats. So, I said, ‘What are you doing back there?’ And this human voice says, ‘I don’t know. What are you doing there?’ So, I walked back there, and it was a young couple doing 66. They had the little stamp books out. They said, ‘I guess this is not part of the tour?’ I said, ‘Well, people live here, but since you’re already inside, come on in, let’s take the tour.”
Lowell Davis passed away on November 20th, 2020. Rose and her son Aaron still live at Red Oak II, as does Jeremy Morris. Rose maintains the Red Oak II Facebook page and runs the Gallery. Morris is a fountain of information about the outlaw roots of some of the buildings and characters that used to occupy several of the buildings at their original location. Davis is now gone but his masterpiece, a reflection of the quieter, simpler life that once represented this southwestern corner of Missouri, lives on. He would be proud.
Illinois sunshine streaming through the singular window of the Patton’s log cabin paints its small walls with its only source of light. Handmade furniture fills the small, wooden space in each corner, and a fireplace on the side makes the space cozy. Coming from a time before even paved roads, the cabin sits in the heart of the heartland, Lexington, Illinois. Originally built in 1829 and located less than a mile from Route 66, in the Lexington Park District, John Patton’s log cabin has been well-preserved throughout the 194 years of its existence and has a great story to tell.
Its tale begins when Kentucky farmers, John Patton, his wife, Margaret, and their 12 children, made the move west to Illinois, in a covered wagon. Their eldest daughter had been married off to Aaron Foster, who also joined the move. They arrived in the fall of 1828 and settled near what seemed like a deserted Kickapoo Indian settlement, southeast of Lexington. In need of shelter and in preparation for the coming winter months, the Patton family made use of some of the empty wigwams to survive. When the winter ended, the Kickapoo Indians returned to reclaim the wigwams they had left behind.
Patton, being a wordsmith, established good relations with the Native Americans and negotiated for some land, striking a deal to construct a permanent home. The friendly relations between the white settlers and the Native Americans enabled the two groups to work together that summer and raise an 18-feet by 20-feet cabin, log by log. At the time the cabin was completed, there was not another Western-style home of its kind between it, and Chicago.
“[John Patton] was just a well-liked guy,” expressed Carol Williamson, curator of the Patton’s log cabin today and a descendant of John Patton. “That spoke well for him in a time where you’re bartering with your neighbors. So, that type of demeanor was an attribute. Back in those days, they held church services in the cabin. Some of the first church services in the township. It was the first polling area in 1831. This is where the first county officers were voted into office, along with President Andrew Jackson in the 1832 election.”
Not much information is available about what became of the Patton family, but Patton passed away in 1854 and was buried in Pleasant Hill Cemetery, in Lexington. He is remembered for being the first white settler to build the first house in McLean Township.
As for the cabin, by the turn of the century, it was known as the oldest house in Northern McLean County and in 1904, it was relocated three and a half miles from its original site and used as a barn.
After withstanding over a century of preserving Illinois history, the cabin became dilapidated. In response, the City of Lexington, with a handful of Patton’s descendants, came together to plan the cabin’s restoration. Marking each log, so as not to misplace one, the team took their time taking apart the historic structure.
“It’s kind of like a jigsaw puzzle or a Lego set, where you number each log as to where it went, what side it was on, so you know where it was at. Some of the logs had not weathered as well as others. So, they had to find comparable logs.”
The cabin was dismantled in September of 1963 and presented to the McLean County Historical Society for safe keeping. In 1969 it was reassembled to most of its original glory in Lexington Park District. Between 1984 and 1985, a handful of badly weathered logs were also replaced, post reconstruction. The 12th oldest structure in the state of Illinois never looked better.
Today, Lexington Park District offers tours and history lessons to visitors to the park.
“We try to instill in the kids what it was like to live on the prairie. What it was like to be a pioneer in the early 1800s in Illinois. It was not an easy life,” expressed Williamson, who guides tours and teaches many visitors about the life of the Patton’s during the late 1800s.
Fully restored, and ready for another 100 years of preservation, the Patton’s log cabin stands proudly at the edge of Keller Park. While the structure may not be as well-known as other iconic Mother Road stops in Illinois, its historic significance is undebatable, and a sweet reminder that Route 66 still has a few secrets yet to be discovered.
Photograph by Brennen Matthews
Nevada is known for many things: Long, empty winding roads, bright city lights and the excitement of Las Vegas; legalized gambling and ranches of ill-repute; love affairs with extraterrestrials; and yes, its long-abandoned mining towns. Nevada is home to more than 600 ghost towns. The most famous is arguably Delamar. Originally named Ferguson Mining Camp, and later changed to Delamar, the possibly cursed town has a fascinating story to tell.
John Ferguson and Joseph Sharp entered the assayer’s office in rural Nevada with what they hoped was more than just a bag of rocks. They were not disappointed. It was 1889 in Monkeywrench Wash and they had struck it rich; golden rich.
“Ferguson was a rancher and miner who also trapped mustangs in the area to make money,” said Michael Green, Professor of History at the University of Nevada. “Ferguson was involved in other mines in the area, and he prospered. He bought out Sharp’s interest for two horses and a wagon.”
Five years later, Captain Joseph Raphael De Lamar, was struck with “gold fever.” In his early years, he found treasure from salvaging sunken ships. But, as much as he loved the sea, he loved money more and abandoned his sea-going adventures to become a Wall Street trader. De Lamar liked the power that money afforded him, and when mining fever hit the country, he abandoned Wall Street and made his way to Nevada, hoping that he had just a bit of a Midas touch.
“Captain De Lamar fit a pattern for Nevada investors who came in hoping to make a killing. Nevada had developed a reputation of being the state you could go to do things you shouldn’t do — like gambling and womanizing. The Captain’s personality fit a life of ‘pushing the edge of the legality envelope’,” said Green.
Although the Ferguson mines were producing silver, copper, lead, and zinc as well as gold, it was a time of poor economy for all of Nevada. The Captain took advantage of the situation and offered $150,000 for Ferguson and other area mines. The amount seemed like a fortune to the miners, who gladly accepted his offer. The name was then changed to the Town of Delamar (pronounced Day-la-mar).
The purchase was good for the area, and in three years, the fledgling town boasted 3000 residents. Business boomed, and soon a hospital, post office, school, and an opera house were built to accommodate the bursting population.
Forever wanting to keep his money close, the Captain had an idea. He began minting his own coins — a currency that was redeemable, and only redeemable, at the company office and store. Eventually, and unfortunately for the Captain, the coins made their way out of the Delamar community and into general circulation as far away as Utah. The U.S. District Attorney ordered him to withdraw the coins. He refused and was arrested but released soon after when he begrudgingly agreed to withdraw the currency and replace it with United States money.
Now that the small mining town was thriving, the mines began offering high-paying jobs. A miner could make $3 or more per day. The benefits included a choice of housing, credit at the company store, free medical attention, and completely paid funeral expenses. Many young men flocked to the mines
with the goal of securing their financial future, allowing them to marry and start a family. It all sounded like a pretty golden opportunity.
But not everything was as it seemed. The new recruits arriving in town were taken aback by the many local women adorned in black mourning shrouds. Beneath the promise of prosperity, was a deadly poison that hung in the air and willfully taking the lives of many.
“The most pressing problem was that the air was poisoned with what the miners and residents called the Devil’s Dust,” said Green. The perpetual cloud that hung over the town was silica dust created from dry crushing the ore and releasing the silica from the embedded quartzite. Miners, families, and pets were infected with the lung disease, Silicosis. People died within months of arrival to the town, and with more than 400 widowed residents, the town was dubbed “Widow Maker.”
The miners protested the working conditions to force Captain De Lamar to switch to a wet crushing system, but he held firm. Switching systems would be costly, and he was not one to be foolish with a dollar. The miners refused to work. Realizing that his stubbornness may be costing more money than complying with the miners, the Captain relented and changed to a wet system. Unfortunately, the forty-gallon-aminute water supply was not enough to keep the Devil’s Dust at bay. It was too little, too late.
To add to the dilemma, a fire spread through the town in the spring of 1900. There was not enough water to fight the flames. The wooden buildings burned out of control and destroyed most of the town.
Between the poisoned air, lack of water, disgruntled mutinous miners, and the slowdown of production, the Captain had enough. In 1902, deciding that he’d gotten all he would get from Delamar, he sold his interest to Jacob and Simon Bamberger and left Delamar forever.
The Bambergers, German emigrants who settled in Salt Lake City in 1875, were entrepreneurial pioneers. They became mining magnates with their acquisition of mines throughout various states.
A fresh influx of money and attitude was pumped into the area. A 400-ton mill was built, and they remodeled the old mines with the addition of electricity and Chilean mills, a process that included water. They mined the leftover minerals in the tailing piles. Despite their efforts, the mines closed only seven years later.
By 1910, the ore had disappeared, as did most residents. In a short 20-year span, Delamar saw its heyday and collapse.
“All that remains of Delamar are stone structures where buildings once stood,” Green said. “There are visibly abandoned mine shafts and some tailing piles from leftover extracted ore.” added Green. “I’m not much on paranormal activity, but it is classified as a ghost town.”
This once-thriving but noxious town is now an abandoned ghost town, but if you watch from a hillside overlooking the remains of the town, you may be able to imagine it as it once was, full of bustling life and a million hopes and dreams. If it is haunted, perhaps the ghosts are still present and watching out for what was once their home.
21c Museum Hotels introduces two food and beverage concepts inside its new St. Louis property, opening this summer.
Inspired by the rich culinary traditions of Spain, Idol Wolf takes a playful approach to tapas style dining by combining local and seasonal ingredients with classic Iberian sensibilities.
Good Press is downtown St Louis’s next favorite coffee café by utilizing local roasters, growers, and purveyors.
Matthew Daughaday Executive ChefBoth restaurants are under the leadership of St. Louis native, Executive Chef Matthew Daughaday and find inspiration in the best ingredients the Midwest has to offer.
> Learn more at 21cStLouis.com
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With more than 300 days of sunshine a year – and a unique mix of tranquil waters, rugged mountains, and tons of fun – it’s hard to stay inside. Discover Lake Havasu City – just a short drive from Route 66 – and play like you mean it.®
