The landmark Lucille’s Service Station along Route 66 near Hydro, Oklahoma, sustained moderate damage from a tornado, but a nearby office building designed to look like the original motel was more ravaged.
KFOR-TV in nearby Oklahoma City shot footage from a helicopter of the site. As you can see, the original station suffered a little roof damage, but everything else about it seems OK.
Damage to the office building is a lot more substantial:
Rhys Martin, president of the Oklahoma Route 66 Association, also said an Oklahoma MainStreet representative also told him that damage to the station’s roof was light.
The more heavily damaged office building to the east of the station was built in 2014.
That tells me those older structures such as Lucille’s came with stout construction. Or the twister acted capriciously, as they often do. Perhaps both theories come into play.
Rick Koch, president of Rick Koch Oil in nearby Weatherford, Oklahoma, bought Lucille’s, restored it as a photo op and a few years later built the office building to replace the dilapidated Hamons Court motel. He also built the Lucille’s Roadhouse restaurant in Weatherford, inspired by its design by Lucille’s.
Koch also is going to restore and reopen Glancy’s Motel and rebuild the adjacent Pop Hicks restaurant in Clinton, Oklahoma.
Lucille “The Mother of the Mother Road” Hamons owned and operated Lucille’s for almost 60 years until she died in 2000. The station, built in 1929, is on the National Register of Historic Places.
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