A set of long-abandoned, rock-faced tourist cabins just off old Route 66 east of Kellyville, Okla., was torn down Monday afternoon.
I received word from Route 66 fan Frank Gierhart of Sapulpa that the bulldozers were out Monday. Arriving there, I saw that the cabins were still standing, but a backhoe was digging a big trench nearby and the bulldozer had cleared out brush near the cabins.
The property is fenced by barbed wire, with the buildings nearly 100 feet from the road. The gates that would have provided access were locked. So much for getting close enough for a good photo or asking questions. Here’s a bigger version of the photo above. Here’s a close-up view of one of the cabins taken by another photographer years ago.
I didn’t stay to see it because of other commitments, but it was confirmed to me that the cabins were torn down later that day.
Not much was known about the cabins, not even the business’ name. A writer did the best he could to piece something together in an article for the Oklahoma Route 66 Association newsletter, but much of their history is lost to time. UPDATE: Read Michael Bates’ comment; it contains some of the information in the newsletter article.
It didn’t help that the cabins were set back far from the road. Many travelers, including me, often overlooked it. It was obscure even to many Mother Road fans.
The cabins had been rumored to be ready for the wrecking ball several years ago. Gierhart and the association made efforts at the time to persuade the property owner to leave the cabins alone. It worked, but only for a while.
UPDATE2: Batesline has a excerpt from the book “Preposterous Papa,” by Lewis Meyer, whose dad, Max, built the tourist cabins. Well worth a read for laughs, at the least.
How very sad. Those cabins were built by Max Meyer, father of Tulsa bookseller and author Lewis Meyer. I’d think of that every time I drove by.
Lewis wrote a bestselling and hilarious bio of his dad, called Preposterous Papa, and the cabins are one of Max’s many side-businesses that are described in the book. (A big deal was made of the fact that they were constructed with “native stone”.) The book also mentions that Max had two gas stations, one on each side of 66, but one was torn down when the road was widened.
Lewis writes about being put in charge of the motel, as a naive young college student home on vacation, and his dad instructing that he shouldn’t be suspicious when couples named Smith checked in without luggage for an afternoon nap.
Thanks for the info you’ve provided about the cabins, Michael. The Oklahoma Route 66 Association writer had much of that in his article a few years ago, but I’d been unable to track it down.
There is a strong probability that Meyers’ cabins were the Rock Lake Courts. Somewhere I have the source for that, but no time to dig it up.
It is so sad that another part of America has been lost forever. So many buildings valued in Europe are deemed throw-aways here.
My husband and I looked for these yesterday, Tuesday Nov. 20, 2007.
We wondered at the time, because we couldn’t find them, if all that clearing we saw had been the site. Thank God I have a pix (in one of my 4 huge photo albums) from 2000 that I can remember them by. This just makes me sick! So many of the old icons are being destroyed, especially here in Joplin, Mo. They hold nothing sacred!
I wrote about these cabins in an article in Route 66 Magazine. I believe that “Cabins In The Weeds,” is in the Winter 2003 edition.
As you have noted, the cabins were part of the tourist court built by Lewis Meyer’s father, Max Meyer. And they were immortalized in the best-selling book “Preposterous Papa.” I believe Jim Ross may have the correct name that was listed in hotel/acccomodations brochures of the 1940’s and ’50’s, but all of the locals I spoke to only remembered them as Max Meyer’s Cabins.
I have looked for traces of Meyer’s two gas stations that are mentioned in Preposterous Papa, but have found none. There is a picture of a gas station near Kellyville in one of the Route 66 books, I can’t recall if it is in one of Jim Ross’s or not. Although the caption says that station was west of Kellyville, it certainly looks like it could be the area just across from the tourist cabins.