Elbow Inn’s main building reopens

The main building for the Elbow Inn bar and barbecue restaurant in Devil’s Elbow, Missouri, reopened Wednesday about five months after record flooding ravaged it and the tiny Route 66 town.

The Elbow Inn’s beer-garden area reopened a few weeks after the flood. But seeing the main bar looking all shiny and new was a great thing to see in my Facebook feed Wednesday.

Route 66 enthusiast Jax Welborn shot this video:

The Elbow Inn long has been known for the hundreds of bras stapled to its ceiling. Seeing bras hanging again from the ceiling Wednesday, I asked Welborn whether the floodwaters missed the undergarments or whether bar’s owners salvaged them. Welborn said the owners retrieved the bras before the flooding hit, washed them and reattached them to the ceiling after the restoration.

The bar — long a favorite with locals, bikers, Fort Leonard Wood soldiers and Route 66 tourists — remains a focal point for the village, which is struggling to recover after the disaster. Having it reopen has to be a big lift for Devil’s Elbow locals.

The Elbow Inn originally was the Munger-Moss Sandwich shop, which opened in 1936 along Route 66 near the Big Piney River. Route 66 was realigned to the north during the 1940s, but Devil’s Elbow and the restaurant continued to hang in there as a picturesque town that found favor with tourists, especially canoeists.

(Image of the Elbow Inn in Devil’s Elbow, Missouri, by Jimmy Emerson, DVM, via Flickr)

3 thoughts on “Elbow Inn’s main building reopens

  1. Stopped there today while riding Route 66 to Tulsa. Enjoyed a order of smoked chicken wings while waiting out a rain shower. Great food and friendly smiling faces.

  2. This is truly good news. Devils Elbow has taken a hard blow. It was hard to drive by and see all the Inn’s equipment sitting outside, damaged. Now if the rest of the town can come back to life … Still my favorite place on 66, no matter what!

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