The co-owners of the picturesque Route 66 ghost town of Spencer, Missouri, said they plan to convert the service station into an events center and reopen the diner.
They’re also considering reopening the barber shop and other possibilities. One of the key buildings in the town is called Spencer Station.
Those tidbits emerged in a recent story by the National Trust of Historic Preservation about Spencer and its owners, Ed Klein and Stephanie Cramer, who purchased the town in 2022.
Since then they’ve been steadily rehabilitating the row of buildings, which they call Spencer Station, taking the structures back to the way they looked in the 1930s and ’40s. Klein does most of the construction work, focusing on one project at a time. A recent effort entailed reinstalling pressed-tin ceilings in the diner, after which “my shoulders hate me,” he says. He’s currently restoring the rest of the diner’s interior.
Through its Preserve Route 66 Legacy Business Grant Fund, the National Trust provided grants for Spencer’s preservation in 2024 and 2025. Klein used one to redo the sidewalk in front of the buildings, making access easier and safer. The other went toward tuckpointing two walls of the general store, which the couple is turning into a museum and gift shop. In part, the museum will house memorabilia, photos, and documents already supplied by the Casey family and local residents.
Klein says the service station will become an event space in the future, and the diner will reopen. In response to popular demand, he and Cramer are also considering returning the barbershop to its original purpose. “More and more people are asking us to get a barber,” he says. The couple, who moved nearby after they purchased Spencer, also own a 1920s farmhouse next to the complex. They’re restoring and renovating the home and plan to use it as a vacation rental.
Klein and Cramer also will host an event in October called SpencerFest that will feature food, music and a car show.
Spencer was founded in 1868 along a stagecoach route that became Route 66 about 60 years later. In the 1920s, Sidney Casey bought two acres in the area and constructed a general store, service station and another building that housed a barbershop and a diner.
The businesses closed after U.S. 66 — now known as Missouri 96 — was realigned to the north in 1960.
Casey’s family kept the buildings nominally maintained — basically frozen in time — until they were sold in 2007.
Adding to the throwback atmosphere is a 1923 steel truss bridge over Johnson Creek, just a few hundred feet east of the town.
(Image of Spencer, Missouri, in 2013 by Larry Myhre via Flickr)