Historic Context – Automobile Tourism in Missouri

SURVEY OF TRANSPORTATION-RELATED RESOURCES ALONG ROUTE 66 IN MISSOURI

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction and Methodology

Survey Objectives........…...........………………....................…..…........…………………....…1

Project Scope……….............…………………………………..................................……….…1

Geographic Boundaries of the Survey Area....……................................................................2

Archival Research..........……..…..….....….....…....................……………………....................2

Field Work............………………...…..........…...………………............................……………..3

Historic Context – Automobile Tourism and Roadside Commerce Along Route 66 in Missouri

Early Transportation Routes………….........…......…...……………............................……...4

Boosterism and Early Road Development: 1892-1921……………...........................…. 11

U.S. Highway 66 - Designation and Paving: 1922-1933…………...............................…19

U.S. Highway 66 - The Depression and War Years: 1934-1944….............................…33

U.S. Highway 66 – The Golden Years: 1945-1955…...……………............................…..41

U.S. Highway 66 – Decline and Decommissioning: 1956-1985…...……........………..43

Associated Property Types

Property Type A: Lodging Resources…….........….....…..............……….....................…..46

Subtype: Cottage Court

Subtype: Motel

Property Type B: Automobile-Related Resources…......…...……………........................53

Subtype: Commercial Garage

Subtype: Gas Station

Subtype: Residential Theme Gas Station

Subtype: Oblong Box Gas Station

Property Type C: Restaurants and Taverns.......…...…………….............................……60

Subtype: Food Stands and Drive-ins

Subtype: Full Service

Subtype: Taverns

Property Type D: Commerce and Entertainment Resources……..........................…..64

Subtype: Grocery Stores

Property Type E: Landscape and Roadway Resources..................…..........................70

Subtype: Rural Historic Landscapes

Subtype: Cultural Landscapes

Subtype: Designed Historic Landscapes

Subtype: Roadways

Subtype: Bridges

Conclusions and Recommendations
Inventory Forms/Database....……………......…...…........…………….............………....77

Integrity and Current Condition……........………………....……..………......……...........77

National Register Eligibility……...................…......................................………................79

Cultural Landscapes and Historic Districts..……..……….........................………........80

Recommendations for Future Work…….....……………….............................................88

Bibliography ...........………………………………...…….............………...….....89

Appendices

A. Sample Inventory Form

B. Chronology of Route 66 in Missouri

C. Master List of Surveyed Properties Sorted by Inventory Number

D. Master List of Surveyed Properties Sorted by Property Type

E. Master List of Surveyed Properties Sorted by Integrity and Current Condition

F. Inventory of Properties Identified for Future Study – Skip Curtis List

G. Glossary of Landscape Terminology

Introduction and Methodology

Objectives

The current survey project (hereafter referred to as Phase II survey) continued the work begun in a 1992 survey (hereafter referred to as Phase I survey) of transportation-related properties on Route 66 in Missouri. The Phase II survey was aimed at two primary objectives: evaluation of the resources that were identified, but not evaluated in the Phase I survey and development of a survey report summarizing the findings of the two phases of the survey of Route 66 resources in Missouri. In both phases of the survey, the identification and evaluation of resources was limited to the transportation-related resources along Route 66 in Missouri. Additional goals established for the Phase II survey included the evaluation of the historic resources along Route 66 in terms of eligibility for listing on the National Register of Historic Places and the creation of a database of survey properties. Both of these objective are aimed at providing the State Historic Preservation Office and the Route 66 Association of Missouri with a planning tool for the management and promotion of the historic resources along Route 66 in Missouri.

Project Scope:

In September 1992, a survey of the transportation-related resources along Route 66 in Missouri was begun. Using the Secretary of the Interior’s Criteria for Evaluation, four criteria were developed to use as a basis for identifying and evaluating resources for the survey.

1. A building, structure, site or object which was designed or used to serve the travel trade

on U. S. Route 66 and was constructed between the years 1926-1955.

2. A building, structure, site or object which may be eligible for individual National Register

listing.

3. A building, structure, site or object which contributes to the highway corridor’s sense of

time and place and historical development and may therefore be a contributing resource

in a National Register district.

4. A building, structure, site or object which is necessary to fully develop and evaluate the

highway’s historic context or associated property types.

Preliminary fieldwork and research by the Phase I project consultant and the Route 66 Association of Missouri yielded a list of 266 resources (representing 233 individual sites) which appeared to meet the four criteria established for the purposes of the survey.[1] This list included properties in the counties of Crawford, Franklin, Greene, Jasper, Laclede, Lawrence, Phelps, Pulaski, St. Louis, and Webster, and in the city of St. Louis. In April 1993, the scope of the survey was amended, and the number of counties to be surveyed was reduced to five – Franklin, Lawrence, Jasper, St. Louis (city and partial county), and Webster. Ultimately, 173 inventory forms were completed. A brief final report was also written to summarize the findings of that phase of the project.

For the current (2002) Phase II Route 66 survey project, the consultants, Debbie Sheals and Becky Snider, continued the survey that was begun in 1992. All of the information compiled during the 1992-93 survey was entered into a survey database. In addition, the remaining 105 sites (144 individual resources) that were identified, but not inventoried, were documented, researched and entered into the survey database. The consultants also reviewed earlier surveys that covered areas in the path of Route 66. Information from the inventory forms for transportation-related resources on Route 66 from these surveys was compiled and included in the survey database. Many of these resources are bridges along Route 66 for which inventory forms were generated as part of an Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) survey.

More than 75 previously unidentified resources were also documented as part of the Phase II survey. To distinguish these new properties from the ones identified in Phase I, they were given 100 level survey numbers. Many of these resources were initially identified by historian Skip Curtis. Mr. Curtis provided the consultants with information about more than 100 properties along Route 66 that had not been identified in the Phase I survey. A separate database was created for properties identified by Mr. Curtis, but not surveyed as part of the Phase II survey project. (See Appendix F)

Geographic Boundaries of the Survey

This survey was limited to transportation-related resources along Route 66 in Missouri. Only resources directly related to travel and transportation along Route 66 were evaluated. The database that was developed from previous and current survey information includes resources from all of ten counties in Missouri through which Route 66 traversed including resources along abandoned alignments.

Archival Research

In the Phase II Survey, the consultants used primary and secondary resources to determine, when possible, historic uses, construction dates and early owners for the properties identified but not researched in the Phase I Survey. However, only limited research was done on the properties that were newly identified in the Phase II Survey. Archival research identified information about the general history of Route 66 and roadside architecture, with specific attention to the development and resources of Route 66 in Missouri. The topic of Route 66 has captured the attention of many writers in recent years, and a number of highly respected historians have published books and articles about the beginnings of Route 66, its effect on the country and on the local communities it passed through, and its demise. In addition, the topic of the development and proliferation of all types of roadside architecture has also been widely covered in the mainstream press and in scholarly journals. These sources and many others related to the development of transportation in Missouri were used. The consultants also reviewed primary sources to assist in the dating and evaluation of individual properties.

The location of historical source materials used for the survey includes the State Historical Society of Missouri, Ellis Library at the University of Missouri – Columbia, the Missouri Department of Transportation archives, county historical societies, and the private collections of several local historians, particularly those involved with the Route 66 Association of Missouri. Highway, city, telephone, and lodging directories as well as Route 66 guidebooks and historic postcards, were used to establish construction dates and to identify early owners. However, due to the rural location of many of the survey properties, some properties were not included in these directories or guidebooks and little historical information about them was found. Local newspapers were also used to develop additional information about specific properties. Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps and Missouri Department of Transportation Highway Maps provided very limited historical information about the survey properties because maps existed for only a few towns along the route and because these maps rarely extended beyond city limit boundaries.

The Route 66 Association of Missouri and, in particular, Skip Curtis, also assisted in the compilation of current names and address information as well as historic owner information for property owners within the survey area.

Fieldwork

The fieldwork for the survey was, for the most part, limited to those resources previously identified, but not documented in the 1992-1993 survey. However, many of the resources that were surveyed in Phase I were also rechecked during the Phase II fieldwork. The entire length of Route 66 in Missouri was driven by the consultants and field notes about the current condition of some of the previously surveyed resources has been included in the database. Transportation -related resources that were discovered during the course of the fieldwork for the project were also documented and added to the database.

Basic physical information about the properties was recorded on inventory forms. (See Appendix I) An electronic template for the forms was developed using Filemaker Pro 5.0. Final inventory forms have been printed on archival paper.

Black and white photographs were also taken of each property that was not recorded in the 1992 survey or other related surveys. Streetscapes and general views were also taken to document potential historic districts and/or cultural landscapes.

Potential historic districts and intact cultural landscapes received separate evaluation and analysis by Dr. Carol Grove.

Historic Context

Automobile Tourism and Roadside Commerce Along Route 66 in Missouri

The historic context for Automobile Tourism Along Route 66 in Missouri traces the development of Missouri’s roads and highways from early trails to the national interstate system, with an emphasis on the history of U.S. Highway 66. It is divided into six major sections which detail the early transportation routes in Missouri, the promotion and development of roads in response to the proliferation of automobiles, the creation of the highway system and Route 66, the effects of the depression and World War II on highway and roadside business development, the golden years of Route 66, and the creation of the national interstate system which precipitated the decline and decommissioning of Route 66.

Early Transportation Routes

Although transportation modes in Missouri in the twenty-first century are radically different from those used by the first inhabitants of this land, many of the roads that we use today follow routes that were established centuries, if not millennia, before the first European settlers ventured into this area. Buffalo, deer and other animals created some of the earliest traces as they migrated from one area to another following the paths of least resistance. These traces were also used by Native American tribes and became established Indian trade and hunting trails. “Because these trails followed the easiest and most direct routes, many of them became the first roads used by European settlers, and, in turn, our modern highways.”[2]

Early explorers of Upper Louisiana territory initially followed the area’s extensive natural waterways. However, when they ventured beyond the banks of the rivers into the unchartered wilderness, they discovered trails worn into the landscape by the animals and Indian tribes that inhabited the region. The earliest account of an expedition by a European into what is now Missouri dates to 1542. That year a group led by explorer Hernando DeSoto crossed the Mississippi into the Upper Louisiana Territory. DeSoto sent a small group north along an Indian trail to LaSaline for salt. “With this penetration of the Missouri wilderness to present Ste. Genevieve County, DeSoto left his name on one of the state’s earliest known trails, a trail that has left its mark on the present highway system.”[3] During the next two centuries as the Missouri territory was explored, the Indian tribes that inhabited the area were encountered and the many trails that they used were discovered. These trails, along with the Missouri’s system of riverways

influenced later settlement and transportation routes. A map, which was included in the thesis Early Roads in Missouri by Martha May Wood, shows the major Indian trails that were in existence in Missouri before European settlement of the area.[4] (Figure 1) Many of these trails, particularly those south of the Missouri River, were established and used by the Lower Osage tribe; most of these trails became roads and eventually highways.

Figure 1: Indian Trails of Missouri

Source: Early Roads of Missouri by Martha May Wood, 1936.

The trails of the Lower Osage Indians branched out in several directions from their villages south of the Missouri River on the west side of the state. Some of these trails led south to hunting areas near the White, Arkansas and Verdigris Rivers while others led north to the villages of other Indian tribes. However, the longest and best known of the Osage trails led from hunting grounds in present-day southern Missouri, northern Arkansas, and eastern Oklahoma to St. Louis where there was a market for trading with European settlers. This trail, which grew to be known simply as the Osage Trail “roughly followed the highlands between the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, crossing the Gasconade river on its headwaters near present Waynesville in Pulaski County.”[5] Despite its importance, the Osage trail, like most of the trails in the Upper Louisiana area, remained mainly an Indian trail until the nineteenth century when white settlers began pushing into the heart of the territory newly acquired by the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase.

In the eighteenth century, when the Upper Louisiana area was ruled by the French and later, the Spanish, a number of traces, which roughly followed established Indian trails, were in use along the Mississippi and Meramec Rivers. These traces developed into crude roads as a result of early lead mining activities in the area and as a result of the establishment of French and later, Spanish posts at St. Louis, Ste. Genevieve, Cape Girardeau and New Madrid. Early miners followed an Indian trail that led from Mine La Motte to the Mississippi’s west bank across from Fort Chartres. By 1735, Ste. Genevieve had developed into a settlement at this river crossing point, and this trail had become so well-established that it could be considered a road. It was called the Three Notch Road because it was marked by three notches in trees along the route.[6]

When Spain took control of Upper Louisiana in 1770, the development of the area was still limited mainly to St. Louis and to the mining settlements. However, in the late eighteenth century the Spanish government began encouraging settlement of the area west of the Mississippi by United States citizens in an effort to keep the settlement of the area by the English from Canada in check. As settlements were established in New Madrid and Cape Girardeau in 1789 and 1793 respectively, another trace from St. Louis to New Madrid, which was also based on the Shawnee Indian trail, quickly developed.[7]

Following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the increased settlement of the area west of the Mississippi resulted in new roads. The first law concerning roads in the Missouri territory was passed in 1806. It provided for the establishment and maintenance of roads in each district. Two years later, Territorial Governor Meriwether Lewis signed a law providing for a road between St. Louis and New Madrid. Each of the four districts through which the road passed was to pay for its part of the road.[8] Over the next decade, roads also began to stretch westward along the Boonslick Trail and north along the Mississippi River. The Boonslick Road was the first east-west road, and it was the first road in the area that was not based on an Indian trail.[9] These roads were established by laws passed by Missouri’s territorial government and, for the most part, were financed by the districts they ran through. However, a few roads were funded by private individuals or by subscription. In 1814, Missouri’s territorial road laws were rewritten and all roads established by any court were declared “public roads.”

With new roads being constructed in the Missouri Territory and new settlements being established, enterprising citizens started businesses to accommodate the hundreds of emigrants. Not only were stagecoach routes established, but also taverns, Missouri’s earliest roadside businesses, were constructed along those routes. Like the tourist courts that developed along Missouri highways in the early twentieth century, these taverns provided a variety of services including food, lodging and mail.

In the Missouri tavern, the pioneer settler and the wandering stranger were first welcomed to our soil. In this early wayside inn business was transacted, religion preached, duels decided, politics discussed and frequently settled, towns founded, courts convened, and hospitality dispensed.[10]

By 1821, the year Missouri became a state, four main trunk line roads were in existence: the St. Louis-New Madrid Road, also known as King’s Highway, the Boonslick Road, the Salt River Road and the St. Louis-Arkansas Road, also known as the St. Louis-Natchitoches Trail.[11] Upon admission to statehood, Missouri, like other states newly admitted to the Union, was given a grant for the construction of roads, waterway improvements and schools. The funds for this grant, known as the three-percent fund, were derived from a portion of the proceeds of the sale of public lands.[12] In 1829, the Missouri General Assembly officially designated the three-percent fund as a road and canal fund to be distributed equally among the counties. With the exception of construction of military roads, the three-percent fund was, however, one of the only federal subsidies for Missouri roads until the twentieth century. The policies established by two controversial road projects, the Cumberland Road and the Maysville Turnpike, would set the tone for the federal government’s participation, or lack thereof, in the construction and management of the country’s roads.

In 1806, an act was passed by the President and Congress authorizing the construction of a national road known as the Cumberland Road. The design and construction of the road took twelve years and the traffic on the road was so heavy that it was in need of repair soon after the road was put into use. To fund its maintenance, Congress passed a bill in 1822 authorizing the collection of tolls on the Cumberland Road. President Monroe, however, vetoed this bill on the grounds that collecting a toll was, in effect, assuming jurisdiction over the land upon which the road was constructed on, a power that Congress did not have. Eventually, the legislatures of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia agreed to accept responsibility for the maintenance of their state's section of the road. This Presidential veto virtually halted Federal appropriations for road maintenance.

The Maysville Turnpike Veto of 1828 produced a similar result with regard to Federal appropriations for road construction. President Jackson vetoed a bill that would have subscribed 1500 shares in the Maysville Washington, Paris and Lexington Turnpike Road Company to the U.S. Government. In his veto, the President noted that the Constitution delegated the construction of roads to the states and that an amendment to the Constitution would need to be made to shift this responsibility to the Federal Government.[13]

Because the only Federal subsidy for Missouri roads was the three-percent fund, the state had to find ways to pay for road construction and maintenance. One such method was taxation. As a result, the construction of early Missouri roads was facilitated, in part, by the creation of a poll tax by an act of the General Assembly in 1822. The act stipulated that each county was responsible for maintaining its roads and that all free males between the ages of 16 and 45 were required to maintain the roads within their district. The tax could be paid in cash, but few were able to do so. Instead, each county would periodically have a “road bee” to work on the local roads. Although the road did receive some attention, these work details were very much social events. As Walter Williams and Floyd Shoemaker noted in Missouri, Mother of the West,

Working the roads was really a festive occasion. Its social value was beyond question. It was really a time for local gossip and for story telling. The fate of the state and nation was heatedly debated. “Inside stories” of recently past political maneuvers were made public. There were guesses on future political line-ups. Questions of supremacy in running, jumping and wrestling were settled in a practical way. There was also some work on the roads, rarely under skilled direction....The dirt was moved around a bit. There was an effort to build up the center of the road so each side would slope almost to the degree of the roof of a house.[14]

Prior to 1821, immigration into Missouri had largely been restricted to the areas along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers and along the Boonslick Trail. However, in the early 1820s, settlers began moving into the interior portions of the state and laying claim to lands in central and southern Missouri. Because this area had been designated as reservation land for the Delaware and Kickapoo Indians, conflicts arose between the white settlers and the Indians. The Indians appealed to the government and their claim to the land was upheld. However, “in 1832, the Delawares and the Kickapoos ceded the land in this region back to the United States. Many of the early white settlers then returned to their former claims and began permanent settlements.”[15]

Greene County was established in 1833 and a land office was set up in Springfield in 1835. With the rapid settlement of this area and the development of Springfield as the most important town in the southwest region of the state resulted in a need for a better road between St. Louis and Springfield. It was this road which was later developed into U.S. Highway 66. As a result, a series of laws in 1837 and 1838 authorized the construction of a state road from St. Louis to Springfield. The St. Louis-Springfield State Road roughly followed the route of the Osage Trail, which was also referred to as the Kickapoo Trail. Later, during the Civil War when the Federal Government installed telegraph lines along the Osage Trail, it became known by a new name – the Old Wire Road.

In the mid-nineteenth century, along with demands for more roads came the expectation for continued improvement in road conditions. Roads were often impassable for several days after a rainstorm. One of the early attempts to create a hard-surface road was the plank road. These roads, which were similar to the plank sidewalks found in many burgeoning towns, were constructed with oak sills laid parallel to the roadway and planks laid on the perpendicular across the sills. In the late 1840s and early 1850s, more than 50 plank-road companies were granted charters to build plank roads in Missouri. Seventeen plank roads were actually constructed in Missouri, including the longest and most famous plank road in the United States. The 42-mile long Ste. Genevieve, Iron Mountain and Pilot Knob Road was completed in 1853. It had five toll gates and was used primarily to haul iron ore. However, a short four years after it was completed, the Ste. Genevieve, Iron Mountain and Pilot Knob Road was made obsolete by the completion of the Iron Mountain Railroad.