Motels, filling stations and a night in a wigwam
The traffic along Route 66 opened restaurants, motels and gas stations to serve passing motorists, and the sights became part of the journey. [source]
The Wigwam Motel in Holbrook, Arizona, is one of a small family of motels whose rooms were built to look like tipis. It is a roadside oddity in the best sense: you can still see why a tired driver in the mid-century years would stop.
In Shamrock, Texas, the Tower Conoco Station and U-Drop Inn is an Art Deco landmark of the Texas panhandle — a filling station and café under one theatrical tower.
The Blue Swallow Motel in Tucumcari, New Mexico, still faces the old road with neon of the kind that once lit Main Street after dark.
At Hackberry, Arizona, a general store stands beside the two-lane highway with a collection of signs and relics — a reminder that much of “Route 66” today is a historic alignment running beside, and sometimes under, the interstate that replaced it. [source]
Who travelled the road, and why →
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