A couple with close family ties to the shuttered Vernelle’s Motel near Newburg, Missouri, also recently acquired the long-closed John’s Modern Cabins property next door.
They plan to convert the Vernelle’s property into an RV park, using the now-abandoned Interstate 44 / Route 66 roadbed, and rename it Vernelle’s Route 66 RV Park & Campground. Long term, they plan to renovate the motel, repaint the Vernelle’s sign, restore the John’s Modern Cabin’s neon sign, take steps to preserve the surviving cabin and add new cabins to the property.
The new owners are Dwayne and Shona Goodridge. They are the son and daughter-in-law of previous longtime Vernelle’s owner Ed Goodridge, who died in 2022 at age 85. Vernelle’s closed to overnight travelers in 2012.
Dwayne said in a phone interview they recently closed on the deal for John’s Modern Cabins from Kenneth Ross, son of longtime owner Loretta Ross.
Dwayne says he has three sons and a daughter-in-law to help him with the project. They plan to open 12 RV spaces on the former I-44 roadbed in front of Vernelle’s by summer, then add 20 spaces in the next two years.
In the next two to three years, they plan to renovate and reopen the Vernelle’s motel building to overnight travelers.
Also within that time frame, they want to restore the John’s neon sign, place a carport over the surviving cabin to protect it from weather and add two to three cabins to the tract that would be available for overnight stays.
Dwayne said he’s consulted with Route 66 Association of Missouri President Rich Dinkela, who has shored up the lone cabin in recent years, about the John’s project.
“We’re extremely excited about this,” he said. “I grew up there; let’s make this work.”
John’s Modern Cabins originally was built along Route 66 in the early 1930s as Bill and Bessie’s Place as a roadhouse and tourist court. A man shot to death his estranged wife there on Halloween night in 1935; he went to prison for 14 years.
John and Lillian Dausch bought the property about 1950, renamed it John’s Modern Cabins and added a few more cabins and its famed neon sign. John was nicknamed Sunday John because of his penchant for selling beer on Sunday and flouting local laws. (He was cited at least once for doing that.)
The business closed and rapidly declined in the late 1960s with the death of Lillian, and John died a few years after that. Loretta Ross later purchased the property with the idea of turning it into a summer or hunting property, but it never happened.
Vernelle’s Motel originally was built in 1938 as Gasser Tourist Court by E.P. Gasser, according to Route 66 Times. Fred Gasser and his wife Vernelle bought the property in 1952, added a restaurant and renamed it Vernelle’s Motel.
John’s, Vernelle’s and the village of Arlington, Missouri, were victimized by repeated realignments of Route 66, then I-44, that adversely affected their businesses. This video details it well.
(Image of John’s Modern Cabins in 2013 near Newburg, Missouri, by Thomas Hawk via Flickr; vintage postcard image of Vernelle’s Motel and restaurant via 66Postcards.com)
Now if they could just get a bridge across that gap at Arlington.
Glad for this preservation of a very “colorful” piece of Route 66 history.