The Mule Trading Post east of Rolla, Missouri, recently changed owners, and the new caretakers are renovating it for the next few weeks but keeping it open.
In a Facebook post in early January, the Route 66 business stated:
Hello everyone! The Mule Trading Post has sold to new owners and big changes are coming! The Mule Trading Post has been a local attraction since the 1950s and is here to stay! We will be remodeling starting next week to offer our customers a comfortable, exciting and down right brand new show room with new items. WE WILL REMAIN OPEN DURING REMODELING so please stop by and see Ryan and Brock to check it out. Our customers will continue to be greeted with smiling faces and offered great deals and stories the same as it has been for 60 years. Keep watching our Facebook page as we will continue to do drawings and giveaways. Help us by sharing and liking this page and leaving a comment in this post of why you love The Mule!
“We’re opening it for a more open floor plan,” explained Mule Trading Post general manager Ryan Prock, the son of new owner Dennis Prock of Rolla, by phone Tuesday. “You had to duck and move your head in the old layout. We’re taking out a lot of walls.”
Prock said they hope to have the renovations finished by late March.
Prock also said the store’s signature mule neon sign above the entrance and the waving-arms hillbilly sign on the west side of the property also would be repaired.
Carl and Zelma Smith owned the Mule Trading Post for about a dozen years. Dennis Prock took over the reins Jan. 2, Ryan Prock said.
According to WhatWasThere.com, Frank Ebling founded the Mule Trading Post in Pacific, Missouri, in 1946. He moved the business to Rolla in 1957 after Pacific was bypassed by Interstate 44. Billboards advertising the Mule Trading Post were placed as far away as Joplin, Missouri — almost 200 miles.
(Hat tip to Roamin’ Rich Dinkela; images of Mule Trading Post courtesy of Dinkela)
Great news. My family always stopped in on the way to Texas back in the 50’s and 60’s. We still stop there now on the way to Texas nowadays. Kind of a family tradition.
Let’s hope with all the work going on there will enough money available to put in a proper fire prevention system. And training for the staff to use it.
It makes me happy to see it’s still around. I was ten when they relocated it to Rolla in 1957 and we would ask our dad to stop, but he never did.
We were migrant workers from Texas, and always wanted to stop, but had no choice when our father wouldn’t.
Fast forward much later in 2004, on our way to Wisconsin to see family there, I was married with my own children, I finally was able to fulfill my dream by being able to finally visit The Mule Trading Post!
We tried to go on Oct. 8,2020 and the place looked abandoned! Signs were all falling apart and couldn’t see merchandise through the window. I was SO disappointed!