The Starlite Motel in Mesa, Ariz. Video by Ash Ponders for The New York Times
The motel might seem like an ageless fixture of the American landscape, but in fact, this roadside mainstay didn’t exist before Dec. 12, 1925.
That’s when Arthur and Alfred Heineman, two brothers with a successful Southern California architecture practice, opened the Milestone Mo-Tel, the first “motor hotel,” in San Luis Obispo, roughly halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
At the time, motorists had limited options. Their dust-covered clothes hardly suited the highbrow standards of most hotels, and parking in cities could be challenging. So many drivers stayed in autocamps, roadside resting places that sometimes offered basics like firewood and communal bathrooms, pitching tents off their running boards and cooking underneath the stars.
In contrast, the brand-new Milestone featured novel comforts like hot showers and private garages. “There were orange trees in front of every door,” said Thomas Kessler, the executive director of the History Center of San Luis Obispo County, adding, “The idea of being able to reach out and pick an orange from out your window — you know, they talk about that in ‘The Grapes of Wrath.’ It’s such a concept of the American dream.”
Like those trees, motels blossomed, giving a century’s worth of asphalt explorers a place to park their cars, lay their heads and contemplate what’s down the road, and fulfilling a promise perhaps best expressed in the words of those once-ubiquitous ads for Motel 6:
“We’ll leave the light on for you.”
Hitting the Road
The history of the motel begins with the automobile.
1908
Ford introduces the Model T, a mass-produced car aimed at the middle class. A newly mobile nation suddenly needs better roads.
1916
President Woodrow Wilson signs the Federal Aid Road Act, laying the groundwork for a novel way to travel: the road trip.
1925
In September, the Joint Board on Interstate Highways completes the first federal numbered highway system. One of those future highways, Route 66, from Chicago to Santa Monica, Calif., will come to symbolize driving through the Southwest.
1925
The Milestone Mo-Tel, the first official motel, opens on Dec. 12. The property, later called the Motel Inn, got its name, according to local lore, because the sign painter determined that the words “Motor Hotel” would not fit in letters of the desired size.
Rise of the Chains
Motels market themselves as roadside attractions.
1929
The stock market crashes, fueling the Great Depression, in which large numbers of Americans take to the roads, seeking work and a better life. Those who could afford accommodations increasingly chose lower-cost motels over more expensive hotels.
1929
Edgar Lee Torrance opens the original Alamo Plaza in East Waco, Texas. With a facade designed to look like the Alamo, it will become the one of the first major motel chains in the country.
1933
The first Wigwam Village opens in Horse Cave, Ky., featuring a clutch of tepees marked with distinctive zigzag stripes. A notable example of programmatic architecture, in which the building itself advertises the property, it eventually grows to become a chain of seven motels in six states. Three locations remain open today: in Cave City, Ky.; Holbrook, Ariz.; and San Bernardino, Calif.
“The tourist camp is one sound invention that the American roadside has contributed to the American scene. And as an invention it is more satisfying than the hot dog.” — “The Great American Roadside,” James Agee, in an unbylined article for Fortune magazine (September 1934)
1937
The American Automobile Association begins field inspections of lodgings and restaurants. It also begins publishing a guide that will influence generations of travelers.
War and Wanderlust
As the nation mobilizes, Americans catch the travel bug.
1941
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor draws the United States into World War II, and millions of men and women join the war effort, many traveling far from home. This new mobility whets Americans’ appetites to explore their country.
1942
Gas rationing is imposed, first in 17 states, then nationwide, temporarily discouraging long recreational road trips and stoking a desire for travel that explodes when rationing ends in 1945.
1944
Ellis Marsalis Sr., the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis’s grandfather, opens the Marsalis Mansion Motel, a 40-room property in Jefferson Parish, La., to house Black travelers, who faced few options in an era of segregation.
1945
The portmanteau “motel” is added to Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition.
Follow the Lights
Stars, cowboys, crowns and more, all in dazzling colors, appeal to a sense of fantasy.
The Mom-and-Pop Revolution
Small motels flourish in an era of color, kitsch and civil rights.
1945
Japan surrenders, ending World War II, and gas rationing winds down. Americans fill up their cars and head out on the highways, where motels are waiting.
1947
John Lautner, an architect who had studied with Frank Lloyd Wright, builds the Desert Hot Springs Motel, near Palm Springs, Calif. He gives it clean lines and large picture windows, midcentury modern features that will become the calling cards of many roadside motels.
1952
Kemmons Wilson, an entrepreneur, opens the first Holiday Inn in Memphis after a road trip with his family. A single room costs $4 per night, the equivalent of about $49 today. By 1972, when Time magazine lauds Wilson on its cover as “the man with 300,000 beds,” the chain will have more than 1,400 locations in 50 states and 20 foreign countries or territories.
“When weekends are a two-day slump, when summer is just too far away, when vacation means doing the same thing again — you know it’s time to change the pace. Escape now to a new mood at your nearby Holiday Inn!” — a 1960s magazine ad
1954
The Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge opens in Savannah, Ga., expanding on a chain of restaurants known for their many flavors of ice cream.
1954
The A.G. Gaston Motel opens in Birmingham, Ala. A Black-owned motel catering to Black travelers, it will become a central fixture in the civil rights movement, when Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy use it to organize marches and sit-ins.
1955
Vladimir Nabokov publishes “Lolita,” in which the narrator, Humbert Humbert, conducts his illicit relationship with a minor in motels across the country, building on an unsavory reputation of motels that is already taking root in American culture.
1956
President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the law establishing the Interstate System of highways. During his term, about 10,440 miles of Interstates will open across the country. (There are more than 45,000 miles of Interstates today.)
1960
The Alfred Hitchcock film “Psycho,” set at the fictional Bates Motel, hits theaters, forever changing how Americans look at motels — particularly motel showers.
1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 bans racial segregation by businesses offering food, lodging, gasoline or entertainment to the public. That same year, motels hit their peak, with some 61,000 operating around the country.
1968
Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on April 4. The National Civil Rights Museum is established at the motel in 1991.
Objects of Fascination
Postage-guaranteed key chains, individually wrapped soap, bedside Bibles: Motels have elevated some of our most enduring cultural touchstones.
End of the Golden Age
Corporate dominance and lurid associations take a toll.
1970
The United States now has about 30,000 miles of Interstate highways, which often bypass small routes and the locally owned motels along them. Chains like Motel 6, Super 8, Days Inn and Rodeway Inn will come to dominate the roadsides.
1973
The original Holiday Inn, in Memphis, is sold and changes names. The company begins to retire its “Great Sign” — the chain’s ubiquitous symbol, topped with a flashing star — in the early 1980s. The sign is engraved on the headstone of the chain’s founder when he dies in 2003.
1984
I-40 bypasses the last section of Route 66, near Williams, Ariz., and the next year, Route 66 is officially decommissioned, severing many landmark motels’ last link to through traffic.
1986
The Marsalis Mansion Motel closes.
1991
The Motel Inn shuts down as newer, more modern hotels siphon customers away. Most of the Motel Inn’s buildings will be demolished in 2004.
1991
“Thelma & Louise,” a memorable road trip film featuring two best friends on the run, debuts. Some of the most pivotal scenes are set in Western motels.
1992
Roy Lichtenstein paints “Interior With Motel Room Painting.”
A Roadside Renaissance
Nostalgia fuels a movement to rehabilitate classic motels.
1995
Liz Lambert, a former lawyer in New York, returns to her home state of Texas and buys the run-down San José Motel in Austin. She revamps and reopens it in 2000 as the Hotel San José. Ms. Lambert is widely credited with kicking off the motel renovation boom.
1999
Congress creates the Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program, which works for the “preservation, restoration and rehabilitation of historic Route 66 properties,” including classic roadside motels.
2012
Only about 16,000 motels remain in the United States. The move to rehab and reopen old properties gains momentum, driven by companies like Ms. Lambert’s Bunkhouse Hotels and others.
2015
The riches-to-rags Rose family in the TV series “Schitt’s Creek” takes up residence in a dated roadside motel in the tiny town of Schitt’s Creek, eventually reviving it as the Rosebud Motel.
“This is a motel, so we cater more to off-road truckers and drunk teenagers.” — Stevie Budd, the desk clerk, informing the Rose family that there were no suites available at their new home in the first episode of “Schitt’s Creek” (2015).
2020
Covid-19 leads to lockdowns across the United States. Once people begin to travel again, many eschew flying for driving, and hotels for motels, because they tend to have exterior hallways and open stairs instead of elevators.
2021
“Re(Motel),” a restoration-themed TV show, debuts, quickly followed by “Motel Makeover” and, later, “Motel Rescue.”
2025
Renovated motels become hot destinations, commanding prices that would make the Milestone Mo-Tel’s founders blush. High-season rooms go for up to $699 a night at the 1959 Skyview Los Alamos, in Los Alamos, Calif., which appeared in the first season of “re(Motel).” At the 1957 Silver Sands Motel & Beach Bungalows in Greenport, N.Y., rooms in the original motel building typically go for up to $695 in high season. Both motels often have waiting lists.
