Here it is folks - this is where it all started. Kneel at the alter of the first - The world's first motel!
Situated on California's coast is world's first motel. It's claim to fame seems to be an undisputed fact.
In 1925, Pasedena-based architect and developer Arthur Heineman decided to create a "motor hotel" hybrid between rustic auto camps and conventional hotels. But he found that the words "motor hotel didn't fit on his sign, so he scrunched them together.
The Milestone Mo-Tel (later the Motel Inn), located in San Luis Obispo roughly halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, had little garages right next to several dozen bungalows that rented for $1.25 a night. The combination of easy access to rooms and to the highway, reasonable prices, privacy, even a little anonymity, caught on in the lodging industry even though Heineman's plans to establish a chain of similar establishments died during the Depression of 1929.
The Motel Inn is barely a shell anymore with a pair of dilapidated mission-revival style structures are guarded by a chain link fence dressed in barbed wire and yellow caution signs. Through that fence the stained brass plaque affixed to the old office lobby asserting the historical significance of the site (Click for a larger view).
Enjoy it while you can. Take a journey past this sacred monument on Google Earth from the comfort of your office chair. You can cut and paste the motel's address: 2223 Monterey Street in San Luis Obispo, into the "Fly To" tab of Google Earth. The location has drive by photos and you can enjoy a virtual drive past.What remains on this site should be a shrine. A museum. A monument to the great, exuberant, liberating, convenient, homey, seedy, memorable, storied, idiosyncratic and increasingly blurry phenomenon of the motel.
