A group of Route 66 enthusiasts gave the old owners of the Boots Court motel in Carthage, Missouri, a sendoff right before the motel closed for the winter and the new owners take over renovations and reopen it in the spring.
According to a report in the Joplin Globe, about two dozen people from the eight states that Route 66 traverses fully booked the motel last weekend to mark the imminent departure of former owners and sisters Debye Harvey and Priscilla Bledsaw with cake and thank-yous.
“They’ve done a wonderful job of restoring and preserving this old motel,” said Brenda St. Clair, who came from Akron, Ohio, for the event. “I was here for opening night when the sisters first opened it for business in 2012, and it was important to be here for the last night of their tenure.” […]
Gary Daggett, from Amarillo, Texas, was in Carthage on Saturday as well. He serves as president of the Texas Route 66 Association and said the Boots Court motel represents the kind of travel his grandparents experienced.
“Route 66 spans eight states,” Daggett said. “The Boots is the second-oldest motel still in operation on Route 66. That right there is amazing. To have this place in the shape it’s in for people to still enjoy and spend the night — just to stay here is a treat. It’s older than me, so it’s a treat. I stay in these rooms and I think, ‘Man, is this how my grandparents felt traveling?’ It’s nostalgic. … We take for granted all the conveniences we have now, and it’s kind of neat to step back in time and think about what it was like then.”
Bledsaw and Harvey weighed in about their experience of owning the motel for 10 years:
“We talked about all these derelict motels: Wouldn’t it be fun to have a motel on Route 66?” Bledsaw said. “We never really thought we’d ever do that, but we talked about how much fun it would be and meeting all the people. Of course, we had no idea what it took to run a motel. We envisioned ourselves sitting out front waving at people; that’s what owning a motel is all about. But as it turns out, there’s a great deal more to it, so it was a learning experience from day one.” […]
“I think we did a great thing,” Harvey said. “We didn’t do everything we wanted to get accomplished because we wanted to restore all the rooms, but we did the important thing, which is we saved the Boots from neglect, and we pointed out to the community what an asset it is to the point that they don’t want it to go away. “
Local resident Rod Harsh also played an instrumental role in rehabbing the motel and its rooms.
Penny Black took a Facebook Live video of Route 66 roadies gathering under the motel’s neon sign as the sun began to set Sunday afternoon:
Another image from the weekend:
The new owners plan to renovate the final few remaining rooms and reopen the Boots Court sometime in the spring. The local ownership group closed on buying the property in September but let Harvey and Bledsaw lease it back for a few months until the winter closing. Harvey said the new owners have asked their names not to be disclosed for now.
Harvey will stay in the Carthage area to assist the new ownership in retaining the motel’s designation on the National Register of Historic Places.
The motel came close to being demolished in the early 2000s when its owner, citing poor health, sold it to a local developer. Speculation ran rampant the motel would be razed for a Walgreens.
An outcry from the Route 66 Association of Missouri, Friends of the Mother Road and other preservationists scared off the developers.
Harvey and Bledsaw bought the run-down property in 2011 and reopened it to overnight guests after months of work to restore it to a 1940s appearance, including “a radio in every room” and no televisions. They removed a gabled roof added in the 1970s to show the Boots Court’s original flat roof. The property reverted to its original Boots Court name.
The Boots Court was built in 1939 by Arthur Boots. Actor Clark Gable stayed there several times during cross-country trips from his native Ohio; he rested his head in Room No. 6. The Boots was renamed the Boots Motel during the 1950s.
(Image of the Boots Court motel in Carthage, Missouri, in 2018 by Adam Jones via Flickr)