Cotton Boll Motel in Canute, Oklahoma.
The Riviera Courts motel, a Mission Revival on the side of a country road in far northeast Oklahoma, which was once a neon carnival that connected many communities from Chicago to Los Angeles, is deteriorating and nobody seems to be bothered. Moreover, the time is becoming their worst enemy. Some people are reclaiming the few miles of Route 66 history that runs through their city limits.
The Riviera Courts Motel.
In Oklahoma, with more Route 66 miles than any of the eight states it flows through, many motels are derelict or abandoned, used as junk yards, makeshift car lots and flophouses. The owners who inherited these historical footnotes are selling them to the developers.
At least 3,000 motels along the route are in various states of repair or disrepair as estimated by the nonprofit National Historic Route 66 Federation in Lake Arrowhead, California. There are just few motels that survived fight a stigma and are no-tell that offer no-frills accommodations.
The Chelsea Motel in Chelsea, Oklahoma.
The Chelsea Motel, a wood frame structure, to the west of Riviera Courts, is in the worse shape. There are beat up cars parked on the grass in front of it. John Hall, a 62-year-old man is the owner of the motel and wishes to sell the place so that he is able to build an Indian tobacco shop with the money he gets after selling the motel.
There is a Chelsea Motor Inn, opened by Frank and Trudy Jugler. It’s a six room Route 66 tribute motel and there are plans to put teepees where guests can camp out. Juglers are restoring an adjoining 1890s house as a bed and breakfast.
Residents in Flagstaff, Arizona are taking advantage of a front wall improvement program that helps Route 66 building owners restore their neon signs.
Elm’s Motel in Claremore is a series of modest yellow and brown cottages, with ivy creeping along the sides. Once the garages were attached to each cottage, but proprietors figured they could squeeze another room in and the garages were yanked.
A cat skulks around the front porch of The Chelsea Motel.
Pat Webb is the owner of Canute, a dusty town of 500 or so about 105 miles west of Oklahoma City. He checked into the 16-room building in the mid-1990s and never left. Pat Webb turned part of it into his private home and playground for his grandchildren. He has no plans to reopen the place to the public.
62-years-old retiree Klaus Battenfeld bought the Westwinds Motel adobe-style structure in Erick, 12 years ago. He is selling the overgrown property, where tumbleweeds blow across the courtyard like in some Wild West movie.With each mile marker, the story becomes sadder.
A rusted bridge along old Route 66 in Chelsea.
Source: CNN
