The Munger Moss Motel in Lebanon, Missouri, is marking its 75th year this year along Route 66. But there’s another business in town that’s also marking its 75th anniversary.
That would be the Orchard Hills Package Store at Washington Avenue and Elm Street (aka Route 66).
The Lebanon-Laclede County Route 66 Society reported more of its history:
The business was founded on Route 66 by the late Dean Elmore in 1946. Its first home was a rock building east of today’s Crow Paint and Glass. The site now is part of Ed Morse Ford.
Elmore moved the business to its present location at the northeast corner of Route 66 (Elm Street) and Washington in 1971. That brick building has historic significance as the first of two Lebanon gas stations built in the 1930s by O.E. Carter and Ed Lawson. The station featured Barnsdall gas but later converted to Phillips 66.
The gas station’s garage door now is the Orchard Hills entrance and front window, and the garage where Carter and Lawson serviced cars is retail floor space today. Bulk anti-freeze cans that Woody found in the attic now are on display atop a cooler. A second garage on the east side, now a walk-in cooler, was added in the 1960s.
Elmore still was running Orchard Hills when he died in 2003 at age 86. He had been in business on Route 66 for 57 years. Snapshots of Elmore at the old store in the 1950s and his original light-and-water deposit receipt from 1946 hang on an inside door.
Woodrow and Veronica Carpenter now own the business. By their reckoning, they’re only the fourth set of owners of Orchard Hills Package Store in 75 years. Elmore’s grandson, David Wheeler, owns the building, but the Carpenters reportedly are in the process of buying that, as well.
The Orchard Hills and the Munger Moss will receive plaques from the Lebanon-Laclede County Route 66 Society on June 19 to mark those anniversaries.
(Excerpted image from Google Street View of Orchard Hills Package Store in Lebanon, Missouri)