Route 66's Rock Cafe hopes to rebuild

Part of the fascination of old routes is the life along the old route. Many businesses disappear when the old route is bypassed. Some adjust to the lesser traffic. Some towns may reformulate their entire business district to attract a new clientele, like antique shoppers. Some businesses have held on over the years. They do it for many reasons… to put food on the table… their family has always done it… and some to keep the history alive.
One such place on Route 66 is the Rock Café in Stroud Oklahoma. The restaurant was built in 1938. The current owner, Dawn Welch, bought the restaurant in 1993. In the beginning, she had planned to turn the restaurant around, sell it and move to Costa Rica. However, she had so much fun, she stayed. The restaurant is now listed on National Register of Historic Places. Welch is even one of the inspirations for Sally the Porsche in the animated movie "Cars."
Unfortunately, the Rock Café’s classic neon sign today looks over a burned out building. The restaurant namesake walls remain, but the inside filled with only charred remains of classic memorabilia, chrome barstools, and thank you notes from the makers of the movie, ”Cars.”
The good news is that Welch has apparently forgotten about Costa Rica, she says she hopes to reopen the historic site in about a year.
No more burgers, chicken-fried steak or oatmeal pie, for a little while. Thankfully though, the good memories cannot be burned up.
No one was in the building when it caught fire, and no one was hurt.
The Rock Café is located at on Route 66 at 114 West Main Street in Stroud, Oklahoma.

Photos courtesy Shellee Graham & Jim Ross /route66photographs.com

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More Info
Tulsa World story about fire
KOCO-TV story about fire
About Rock Cafe
Rock Cafe's connection to the movie "Cars"

My Driveway was US 99

As part of the Smithsonian’s America on the Move exhibition, they brought an original 1932 piece of Route 66 from Oklahoma to the Smithsonian in Washington DC. I was able to enjoy several hours of the wandering around the history. Among all the people rushing through, I stood there for a moment and thought of the people that traveled this road. What kind of car were they in? Were they a family enjoying a trip, or maybe looking for a new life out west? How many times had the kids impatiently asked, “Are we there yet?” Was Dad trying to put just a few more miles behind him tonight? Was the tired driver worried about that funny sound or whether that temperature gauge will ever go down?
You can get a virtual tour of the museum here and buy the official book here. The Museum has been closed for major architectural renovations. It’s scheduled to reopen November 21, 2008.

While old US 99 doesn’t have the “curb appeal” of Route 66, some folks in Kelso Washington have a leftover stub of old US 99 or Old Pacific Highway as part of their driveway.
I suppose they aren’t a road geek and just think it’s a big old piece of concrete, but there could be some interesting decorating. Some Burma Shave Signs… a nice 99 shield on the mailbox… a sign proclaiming the end of 99 ahead… No Passing?

There are many unimproved miles of the original 99 in Southwest Washington. Some even have the original killer concrete posts. If you would like to drive it, check out this article from the Columbia River Reader newspaper, but be careful out there.

Have you found any interesting pieces of old routes around? Let me know at oldroutes@gmail.com.

The Loneliest Road

It’s 287 miles of US Route 50 in between Fallon and the Utah border in Nevada. It’s called The Loneliest Road in America, for good reason. Even AAA doesn’t recommend driving it. It’s a fine highway, but very, very isolated. It’s not as isolated as when it was the Pony Express Trail or part of the Lincoln Highway, but pretty far out by current standards.

I have only driven a little bit of US 50 in Western Nevada, but it doesn’t take you long to feel you are “out there”. All it takes is a little dust blowing across the road and no cars in sight, and you feel really isolated, really fast. My wife became a bit nervous wondering if we had lost our way.

Nevada tourism folks came up with a fun idea for this “exotic” road. You can pick up free “survival kit” in every town. After completing the survival kit, travelers are rewarded with a survival certificate, a Route 50 lapel pin, and a bumper sticker proclaiming that they have survived this "uninteresting and empty" road. Their survival kit won’t do much if you get stranded, so you are advised to bring along some survival tools as help along the road is miles and miles apart.

The Loneliest Road in America is an official National Scenic Byway. For more information on this byway and other byways around the US, go to http://www.byways.org/explore/byways/2033/




Why is it so lonely? Some political wrangling moved the mainline of the original transcontinental Lincoln Highway as it went west of Salt Lake City. The route was supposed to go southwest from Salt Lake City to the east end of the Loneliest Road near the Utah-Nevada border. Even though private interests had begun to build that highway through what is now the Dugway Proving Grounds, political wrangling moved Lincoln Highway north to the present day route of I-80 and former US 40. So now tons of traffic avoids what could have been a very busy highway, instead of The Loneliest Road in America.