Several reports from the road indicate that the long-declining Fort Courage Trading Post in Houck, Arizona, was being demolished.
Local reports indicate the site was sold and that it will be redeveloped into a truck stop.
Other roadies noted that heavy equipment had been moved onto the site in early February — an ominous sign.
Here are images from before the wrecking ball arrived:
More from a recent video report:
Blue Miller of the Never Quite Lost blog reported that a trading post had operated on that site since 1933.
Then, in the late 1960s, Fort Courage was built as an unashamed tourist trap. It was an exercise in cashing in on the success of the short-lived but popular television series, F Troop. There was no actual link between the two and it certainly wasn’t the series’ location, but the owners tacitly encouraged the idea that this was where the TV programme had been filmed. There was also little note taken of copyright – postcards from the 1970s show signs that read ‘HOME OF F TROOP’ although they disappeared in later years. […]
Next to the trading post is the abandoned Pancake House which was originally built as a restaurant by Van de Kamp’s Holland Dutch Bakery of Los Angeles. The company had a chain of windmill-styled bakeries around LA and plans to extend across the country with a distinctive windmill building design.
Details are fuzzy about when it operated, but I’m pretty certain it has been closed for at least 25 years.
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