The Model T Club of Southern California and other Ford enthusiasts made a stop Wednesday at Gary Turner’s re-creation of the Gay Parita gas station on Route 66 near Halltown, Mo., reports the Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader.

The club is in the middle of driving across the country to commemorate the Model T’s 100th anniversary. Much of the trek will take place on Route 66.

Here’s a remarkable fact about the trip:

“We get 15 to 20 miles per gallon, depending on how many hills and stoplights we hit,” Shirley said.

The Model T’s fuel efficiency puts a lot of SUV’s to shame, despite its relatively primitive technology.

The article also contains plenty of background on the Gay Parita station, and includes a video.

Beth, aka loveroute66, has posted three recent photos of the fast-decaying ruins of John’s Modern Cabins on old Route 66 near Arlington, Mo.

She says in the video that she wanted to videotape them now, as they might be unrecognizable or gone the next time she’s in the region.

I confess that we have a lot of history with John’s Modern Cabins. Emily and I extensively researched the history of the tourist court, uncovered a lot of fascinating details, and became involved with Route 66 largely because of it.

We found it once was a beer joint called Bill & Bessie’s Place, and that an aggrieved husband shot to death his estranged wife there in the 1930s. The killer served about 13 years in prison, remarried after his release and by all appearances lived an uneventful life after that.

The second owner was a Chicago native named John Dausch. He renamed the place John’s Modern Cabins shortly after purchasing it in the late 1940s or early 1950s. Locals said the owner’s nickname was “Sunday John” because he illegally sold beer on Sundays. The place went downhill fast after John’s wife died, and he died in 1971. John’s has been pretty much vacant ever since.

The current owner lives about 100 miles away in St. Charles, Mo. About six years ago, we learned he was about to tear the cabins down. But we and other Route 66 enthusiasts persuaded him to relent. After an initial meeting with him, he lost interest in preserving the cabins. Repeated pleas by me and others to help fix what was left of them were ignored.

So John’s Modern Cabins continue to decay rapidly, especially in the past three years or so. They may be gone soon. But at least they’re still there for a little while, helping tell a Route 66 story.

… the destruction of the historic Harvey House in Seligman, Ariz. As you can see from this submitted photo, workers began tearing the roof down this week.

UPDATE: Don Gray has more photos of the demolition here.

Stop harassing tourists who are visiting our country:

But on April 29, when Mr. Salerno, 35, presented his passport at Washington Dulles International Airport, a Customs and Border Protection agent refused to let him into the United States. And after hours of questioning, agents would not let him travel back to Rome, either; over his protests in fractured English, he said, they insisted that he had expressed a fear of returning to Italy and had asked for asylum.

Ms. Cooper, 23, who had promised to show her boyfriend another side of her country on this visit — meaning Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon — eventually learned that he had been sent in shackles to a rural Virginia jail. And there he remained for more than 10 days, locked up without charges or legal recourse while Ms. Cooper, her parents and their well-connected neighbors tried everything to get him out.

Mr. Salerno’s case may be extreme, but it underscores the real but little-known dangers that many travelers from Europe and other first-world nations face when they arrive in the United States — problems that can startle Americans as much as their foreign visitors. [...]

Each year, thousands of would-be visitors from 27 so-called visa waiver countries are turned away when they present their passports, said Angelica De Cima, a spokeswoman for Customs and Border Protection, who said she could not discuss any individual case. In the last seven months, 3,300 people have been rejected and more than 8 million admitted, she said.

I’ve already covered this issue here. At a time when the U.S. economy is weak and gas prices are at record highs, the last thing Route 66 needs is its own government harassing foreign tourists. Anecdotal evidence suggests that foreigners consist of up to 40 percent of Route 66 tourism, so this is no small thing.

It was obvious that security needed to be tightened after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But Customs and other airport-security departments have gone overboard trying to show how tough they are. When you have travelers harassed in airports for carrying bottles of hair gel or fingernail clippers or reusable Zippo lighters, that is no longer security — that is a ridiculous dog-and-pony show by bureaucrats.

It’s time to end it, and it’s time for more commonsense security procedures.

The Navajo Nation is wanting to build its first casino near Gallup, N.M. But it has run into a snag that may mean construction delays and defaulting on its loan agreement, reports the Gallup Independent.

There are two issues that could cause the Enterprise to miss the proposed opening date. “One is the easement. The site is located on a frontage road, however, the frontage road is considered and designated as Route 66,” Etcitty said.

Because Route 66 is historical in nature, it requires special clearances. Etcitty said they have to go to Santa Fe for those clearances.

The other issue is drainage, in which the tribe needs a permit before it can proceed.

The proposed Church Rock casino is slated to be 60,000 square feet, with restaurants and entertainment venues.

The tribe has to finish the casino by Oct. 15, or it is in default of a $35 million loan. If the tribe is  committed meeting the deadline, there’s going to be a lot of construction workers getting overtime pay.

The Santa Monica Pier, which for many travelers serves as the symbolic end of Route 66, is marking the 100th anniversary of when construction on it began.

The Long Beach (Calif.) Press-Telegram published an interesting history about the pier, including these nuggets:

• It was originally built to help carry raw sewage out into the ocean.
• The pier was a beneficiary in the 1980s of the efforts of a historical preservation group, which kept it from being torn down.
• The new Ferris wheel being built on the pier will have more features, but use 25 percent less electricity.
• Santa Monica Pier now sees more than 4 million visitors a year.

The Pier Restoration Group is looking for fond memories from people who have visited there. You can can e-mail them to yourstories@santamonicapier.org

TheDoings-LaGrange.com published a report on Route 66 enthusiast David G. Clark’s presentation at the LaGrange, Ill., Library about the history of the Mother Road in Chicago.

Clark does these presentations from time to time. If you’ve never seen them, the article at least gives a taste of what they’re like.

Clark also has a Web site and a blog, and his book “Exploring Route 66 in Chicagoland” is highly recommended.

The town of Miami, Okla., has made ambitious (and welcome) plans to play up its Route 66 connection in recent months.

If all those additional Route 66 tourists show up, they’ll need a place to stay. Miami has that covered, too — the number of hotel rooms in the city are projected to nearly double in the coming months, reports the Joplin (Mo.) Globe.

At the end of March, the city had 295 hotel rooms, Davis said. With completion of the new Hampton Inn, that number will jump to 369, and two more hotels under construction will add 150 rooms, she said.

Last year, the city’s 4 percent hotel and motel tax generated $121,540, Davis said, an increase of 12.5 percent over the figure for the previous year. The first quarter of 2008 has recorded an increase of 18 percent over revenue during last year’s first quarter.

With the higher number of hotel rooms, Miami hopes to land more big tourism events.

Verkamp’s Curios has operated on the edge of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon for 102 years — even before Arizona became a state.

However, Verkamp’s will close in September, and you can blame a good chunk of that on the federal government, reports the Canadian Press:

The family’s final chapter at the canyon began in 1998, when Congress passed a law that reversed giving preference to established businesses when issuing contracts. A company that had never operated at a given park now could outbid anyone if it had a better proposal - even if the competition had been there for more than a century.

The Verkamps scrambled, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on appraisals, environmental consultants, financial advisers and lawyers - all in an effort to prepare to face off against major corporations that could vie to run the gift shop Verkamp opened in a permanent building on the South Rim in 1906.

When the National Park Service issued the store’s final prospectus last July, the family chose to give in to what they call “bureaucratic process fatigue.”

“There’s just so many hoops to do what you’ve always been doing,” said Susie Verkamp, the 60-year-old granddaughter of John George Verkamp. “It kind of wears you out.”

The Verkamps also said they had trouble finding someone in their family to run the business, also. This has been a longtime problem with old businesses on Route 66 — finding an heir apparent to run the shop if the children and grandchildren don’t want it.

The story goes on to explain why the law was changed:

Park Service spokesman Jeffrey Olson said the 1998 law shows the public that there is no favouritism in issuing contracts to concessioners.

He acknowledged that not everybody is happy with the law but said small businesses shouldn’t lose sight of their own advantages.

“If I were a big business going up against somebody who had been in business for generations, I don’t know that I would think I had this thing in the bag,” he said. “Incumbency, when you talk about political circles, has a lot of weight.”

I’m not so sure that’s true anymore. When you have countless, longtime mom-and-pop businesses across the country that went broke shortly after a well-connected, corporate behemoth like Wal-Mart came to town, incumbency seems to be a meager advantage, at best.

The law was meant to make things “fairer” in the free market. But that act inadvertently caused the demise of a historic business that will be lost forever.

I don’t call that a fair trade.

(Hat tip: Lynn “Lulu” Bagdon.)

NOTE: Many updates below.

Tornadoes killed at least 16 people Saturday evening in southwestern Missouri and northeastern Oklahoma, including six in Picher, a former mining town just off Route 66.

The Joplin Globe reports:

John Sparkman, of Picher, Okla., characterized the damage done by a tornado in the Northeast Oklahoma community this evening as “complete devastation.”

“The whole south part of town is much totally destroyed. … The path of destruction has to be a half-mile wide.”

And according to Reuters:

“Basically a 24-block area is virtually destroyed,” said Michelann Ooten, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management.

She added that Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry had ordered National Guard troops to arrive in Picher by Sunday morning to help in rescue and recovery operations.

Ooten told the Associated Press that the death toll could rise as emergency workers dig through the rubble left in the tornado’s wake.

The Tulsa World reports that the tornado touched down between 5:15 and 5:30 p.m., destroying the south end of town. According to the World, access to Picher has been blocked because of gas leaks and downed power lines, and the nearby Route 66 community of Miami is assisting with disaster response.

The World reports that a triage area has been set up south of Miami for those injured in the storm, and shelters are being established for Picher residents displaced by the storm.

NewsOK.com has additional information about the storm here.

Wikipedia has already updated its Picher entry with information about the tornado, setting the number of storm-related injuries at 46.

Picher just celebrated its 90th anniversary with a parade; the Associated Press was there and offered this poignant report about Picher’s recent history.

Even before this evening’s storm, Picher was struggling. Lead and zinc mines in the area surrounding the community closed in the early 1970s, devastating the local economy and leaving behind lead-tainted slag piles (many of them visible from Route 66) and 40 square miles of pollution so severe that the federal government declared the entire Tar Creek area a Superfund site; nearly a quarter-century after the declaration, a $60 million federal buyout is under way, and residents have been encouraged to move out of the area for their own safety.

The mines also left a legacy of cave-ins, with abandoned tunnels collapsing periodically, creating more hazards for residents; a 2006 cave-in caused irreparable damage to the Green Parrot Tavern on Route 66 in nearby Galena, Kan. The building was demolished last fall.

You can view a collection of photographs of the Tar Creek Superfund area around Picher at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Web site.

The Tulsa World produced a video last year about life in Picher. You can view it here; to find it, scroll through the video list until you come to “What’s left in Picher,” which is the 10th video from the bottom.

UPDATE: The Miami (Okla.) News-Record, which is just a few miles from Picher, has a good story about the scene in that town.

The News-Record also reports that the Red Cross has set up a shelter at the First Christian Church, at 2424 N. Main, aka Route 66, in the north end of town.

If someone you know in the area is missing, click here to find out whether he or she is in a local hospital. About 40 were taken to the Miami hospital as of 9 p.m. Saturday.

UPDATE2: The Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management reports seven dead and 150 injured in Picher, as of 3:30 a.m. Sunday:

Ottawa County Emergency Management reports homes, businesses and vehicles were destroyed in a 20-square-block area at the south end of Picher. In some cases, only a home’s concrete slab remains. The storm downed power lines, utility poles and trees. Saturday evening first responders went house to house digging through the rubble to free those who were trapped. At daylight today, the search for additional victims will continue.  Damage also reported in Peoria and Quapaw.

Quapaw is a Route 66 town, right on the Kansas border.

State troopers and the Oklahoma National Guard are keeping everyone but rescuers from going into Picher. So it’s not a good idea to be a sightseer today. A search-and-rescue team from Tulsa also is scheduled to arrive Sunday morning.

UPDATE3: The Oklahoma Department of Emergency management, citing an error, dropped the number of Picher fatalities from seven to six.

All the damaged homes in Picher have been searched, so the death toll probably won’t climb any higher.

UPDATE4: Here is a video shot of the tornado near Miami, Okla., that reportedly struck Picher:

Here’s another short video of the damage in Picher:

Here’s a video of firefighters and rescuers, picking through the rubble and looking for survivors:

On Sunday, Amy Mack and about 40 other cyclists are embarking on a 3,400-mile ride from Los Angeles to Boston, part of it on old Route 66.

That’s a remarkable enough quest. But Mack is doing it three years after she was nearly killed in a biking accident, reports the Kalamazoo (Mich.) Gazette:

Thrown more than 100 feet on ML Avenue as she rode her bike to her son’s soccer game in the spring of 2005, Mack suffered four breaks in her back, including a compression fracture, as well as fractures of a leg and ribs. A helmet saved her from death, but it too was broken, and she suffered a closed-head injury.

She spent two weeks in intensive care and half of that summer in a hospital bed at home.

Doctors at one point were not sure she would walk again.

But Mack has pushed herself far beyond that point, strengthening herself for her upcoming 49-day group ride. She expects to average 80 miles a day, the first grueling week involving a ride across the Mojave Desert.

You can read more about Mack’s recovery here. She’s also created a blog of her upcoming road adventures here, which she plans to update along the way.

NOTE: Bumped for important update below.

The Ford Model T is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, and enthusiasts from Southern California and beyond are celebrating with cross-country tours, including one that crosses the nation on Route 66 and the Lincoln Highway National Road, aka U.S. 40.

According to the Springfield News-Leader, members of the Model T Club of Southern California will be making a stop in that southwest Missouri town on May 13 during their Baltimore-to-Los Angeles trek.

The Heart of the Ozarks Chapter of the Model T Club will join up in nearby Conway on May 14 and escort them into Halltown.

The club will stop at the Best Western Route 66 Rail Haven Motel.

So far, I’ve been unable to track down more information about the Southern California club’s national tour. I’ll pass it along as soon as I find it.

UPDATE: Thanks to Denny Gibson, I was able to track down the tour’s itinerary today.

The Model T group enters Route 66 at St. Louis on Sunday and will stay in town there Monday, too. Here’s the rest of the schedule:

• May 13 — Springfield, Mo.
• May 14 — Morning coffee stop at old gas station (at Gay Parita?), continues on to Tulsa
• May 15 — Oklahoma City
• May 16 — Elk City, Okla.
• May 17 — Amarillo, Texas
• May 18 — Tucumcari, N.M.
• May 19-20 — Santa Fe, N.M.
• May 21 — Albuquerque, N.M.
• May 22 — Gallup, N.M.
• May 23 — Holbrook, Ariz.
• May 24-25 — Williams, Ariz.
• May 26 — Laughlin, Nev.
• May 27 — Farewell dinner in Barstow, Calif.
• May 28 — Los Angeles

The group is staying at Best Westerns at each of the listed cities, except for Gallup (El Rancho Hotel), Williams (Grand Canyon Railway Hotel), Laughlin (Tropicana) and Santa Fe (Garrett Desert Inn).

UPDATE2: The Palladium-Item in Richmond, Ind., has a story about the Model T trek.

Here’s a nicely done video about the Hackberry General Store, located on Route 66 in Hackberry, Ariz.

A couple of readers have submitted photos of the dismantling work being done on the Harvey House in Seligman, Ariz., before its final demolition later this month.

Here, you can see workers removing the historic roof tiles:

According to Dan Lutzick, who is overseeing the rehabilitation of another Harvey House in Needles, Calif.:

The supervisor informed me that hazardous mitigation is complete, that the salvage project would be complete in approximately a week and that the Havasu would be demolished immediately following the completion of the salvage work.

(Hat tips to Helen Baker, Dan Lutzick and Frank Kocevar.)

The first Berdoo Bikes & Blues Rendezvous in San Bernardino, Calif., was declared a success, and will return next year, organizers told the San Bernardino County Sun.

it was estimated optimistically that it would draw 3,000 registered motorcycles and 12,000 paying spectators. The actual number was 1,500 bikes and 7,000 spectators. Despite the shortfall, organizers were pleased:

“We fell a bit short of my optimistic expectations,” said Convention and Visitors Bureau President and CEO Wayne Austin. “But the consensus is that this was a phenomenal turnout for our first-year event, and that this event, in this city, has a lot of promise.”

The two-day event, envisioned as a precursor to the Route 66 Rendezvous - the city’s most revered car show and festival - drew thousands of people and vintage metal steeds downtown on Friday and Saturday.

Perhaps more importantly, the event rumbled through without a hitch, easing lingering concerns harbored by people thinking about attending and corporate sponsors.

“The corporate sponsorship and the attendance, those numbers are going to grow,” Austin said. “A lot of people stand back and see how the first one goes, and in the case of the corporate sponsors, they don’t want to risk their money until they see some results.”

This year, the Rendezvous took in $50,000 from corporate sponsors, one-fifth of what the Route 66 Rendezvous attracts annually, Austin said.

I know that some would be disappointed in the numbers. But for a first-year event, those are fairly awesome figures. At the least, it meant hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars of additional money pumped into the local economy.

Organizers will tweak the festival to make it better, and word will get around to motorcycle aficionados that it’s a good event to attend.

If it continues to be run well, it wouldn’t surprise me if Berdoo Bike & Blues becomes nearly as big as the Route 66 Rendezvous.

The Route 66 Association of Arizona’s Fun Run has barely been over for 24 hours, and already videos have been posted on YouTube.

The scene from a 1950 Chevy “rat rod.”

Here’s one of the scene through Oatman:

And here are dozens a photos from the event by David Schaubert, including a few way-cool panoramic shots.

Don Gray also shot dozens of photos at the Fun Run.

The Miami (Okla.) News-Herald reported that landscape architecture students have made their recommendations “Miami Beautiful” — a revamped downtown area.

The students clearly took the “Miami Beautiful” name from the historic Coleman Theatre Beautiful in downtown.

According to the project material, the concept features Main Street as “center stage,” while the parking lots and alleys carry a “backstage” function. The proposed pocket parks are dubbed as the “wings” where people make their entrances and exits.

There’s a hearing scheduled for 1 p.m. Thursday so the public can view the concepts and provide opinions.

And that’s not all that’s being planned for Miami:

Monday, the Miami City Council will consider submitting a $75,000 Oklahoma Century grant application to fund a proposed Coleman Wall of Fame Pocket Park.

The park will recognize Miami’s most famous natives such as Heisman Trophy winner Steve Owens, artist Charles Banks Wilson, country singer Keith Anderson and Cassie and Steve Gaines of the rock group Lynyrd Skynyrd.

The park will feature a fountain, entrance signs, wall of fame plaques, tables, chairs and a wrought iron fence and entrance.

The Victorville (Calif.) Daily Press published a feature called Sunday Drive, for folks who want explore the high desert without shelling out a lot for gasoline.

This one focuses a lot on the Harvey House in Barstow (which houses the Barstow Route 66 Mother Road Museum) and another restored railroad station in the settlement of Kelso.

But it also focused on the Mother Road in Amboy:

If you are an old Route 66 aficionado, instead of returning by the way you came, continue south crossing Interstate 40 to Route 66. Go west on Route 66, and you will soon find Amboy on your right.

Amboy is one of those places that was little more than a gas station in its day, but it provided a brief respite to weary travelers. There came a day, however, when Route 66 was replaced by Interstate 40. However, the gas station and restaurant - at least the buildings - are still there, used by the movie studios as props in films and commercials. On April 12 - the day our bus tour stopped there - a T.J. Maxx commercial was being shot.

Waiting just down the road is Cima Dome, a large crater that stands proudly against the barren landscape.

No, I’m not talking about California. I’m talking about the Missouri Ozarks.

And Appellation America has a nice rundown about its wineries, including those along the Mother Road:

Historic Route 66 runs through the area, and much of the appellation seems unchanged from the highway’s heyday. The famous Wagon Wheel Motel and Finn’s Motel (“Vacancy!” “Family Units!”) still welcome weary motorists. In season, travelers may purchase fresh grapes from plywood grape stands along 66 and its modern successor, Interstate 44. The wineries in the appellation are centered on the St. James/Rosati area, with vineyards surrounding the area. An echoing, retro feel pervades the area, but that is acceptable for grape growing and winemaking, industries that use many tools and techniques that have changed very little in the last century (e.g. small wine presses, oak barrels).

The article includes extensive overviews of St. James Winery and Meramec Vineyards, both in St. James. But there are other wineries in that region.

The Santa Monica Pier in Santa Monica, Calif., isn’t officially at the western end of Route 66. But it’s only a block or so away from that terminus, and it’s a symbolic end of the Mother Road for many travelers.

Other than a hotdog stand or two, the closest place to have a meal at the Pier is at The Lobster, at 1602 Ocean Ave. And according to this review in Jaunted, it appears to be a nicely historic place in an idyllic setting:

The Lobster has fine dining seafood at fine dining prices like $52 for the pan-roasted lobster and $32 for the classic. Yet since it’s steps away from the beach and attached to the pier, fine dining attire is not required.

The Lobster has its own bit of history too, starting out as a small lobster shack in 1923. It was later redesigned in 1999 to give it a more modern luxe California feel. Thus the remodel gave the Lobster a dining room enclosed with glass windows on two sides.

Hit up the tables in this main dining room and request a spot longside the windows to maximize your view of the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Monica Pier, which actually looks romantic from a distance.  As for the food, you have to try the Lobster. We say stick to the Classic Lobster dish rather than the pricier pan-roasted one. And even though you’re next to the water, the Lobster (thankfully) uses fresh Maine lobsters for its dishes.

Not down for dinner? The Lobster has a small bar in front and an outside patio where you can sip on margaritas as the sun goes down. And really, that’s the best time to hit up the Lobster.

Here’s a CitySearch entry about The Lobster, complete with a video.