A smaller replica of the archway that greeted visitors to the Camp Joy tourist camp in Lebanon, Missouri, is being considered in front of one of the original cabins at the city’s Boswell Park.
According to a story on the Lebanon-Laclede County Route 66 Society website, Craig Fishel told the society during a recent board meeting he would help with that endeavor Fishel’s grandparents and great-grandparents founded Camp Joy along Route 66 in 1927.
The replica would be smaller than the original and probably would be anchored on each side of the sidewalk leading to the restored cabin.
The Route 66 Society restored the last surviving Camp Joy cabin in 2019 and, with the city of Lebanon’s blessing, moved it to Boswell Park, which has adopted a Route 66 theme in recent years. The Route 66 Society furnished the cabin, the Lebanon Parks and Recreation Department built a sidewalk to it from the parking lot, and the Laclede County Master Gardeners lined the sidewalk with flower gardens in the style of those that once lined Route 66 in that part of Lebanon.
Fishel said he wants the archway to be finished by 2026, which would be Route 66’s centennial year.
After the Spears family founded Camp Joy in 1927 along a gravel stretch of Route 66 in Lebanon, they eventually built cabins on their 4-acre site and added a Sinclair gas station.
Among its most famous overnight guests at the tourist camp were outlaws Bonnie & Clyde and Pretty Boy Floyd and singer Tex Ritter.
Camp Joy was torn down during the 1970s.
(Image of Camp Joy in Lebanon, Missouri, courtesy of 66Postcards.com)