The First Mo-Tel By Bob Marlow
It was 90 years ago, on December 12, 1925, that the Milestone Mo-Tel opened in San Luis Obispo, California – the world’s first “motel,” quite literally.
Thanks to the growing popularity of the automobile, travel in the US was changing in the 1920s. Where previously any trip between cities and over long distances would be undertaken by train, the private automobile was causing people to travel more widely in their own cars. But there were no Interstate highways in those days and even “major highways” were, at best, 35-mph roads. The cars of the time moved at what we today would consider a leisurely pace and neither the cars nor their tires were particularly dependable. So, motor trips between distant points were a multi-day undertaking.
Traditional hotels were located in the cities, and generally were priced beyond the reach of the casual traveler. City hotels frequently did not have enough room for all the new automobile travelers nor for parking their cars. Overnight stops between cities led to people sleeping in their cars or camping at the roadside. So in 1925 Los Angeles architect Arthur Heineman built the Milestone Mo-Tel in San Luis Obispo, halfway between San Francisco and LA., and he priced an overnight stay at $1.25.
Heineman is credited with coining the term motel, a contraction of motor hotel. Stories vary as to whether this contraction was by intent or expediency (one story suggests that Heinemann could not fit “Motor Hotel” on his sign) but it is agreed that the term was first used at his establishment.
The accommodations consisted of two-room bungalows each with a kitchen and a private adjoining garage. All the units faced a central courtyard with a swimming pool and picnic tables. Swimming pools would become a staple of the countless motels that appeared in the years following World War II, but private garages would not.
Heineman had plans to build a chain of similar establishments from Los Angeles to Seattle, but the stock market crash of 1929 and the resultant Great Depression nixed those plans. Still, the combination of being close to the highway, offering parking adjacent to the rooms, having reasonable prices, and providing privacy, created the modern lodging industry. Only the youngest of us does not have memories of family road trips with a stop at a motel where the car was parked right outside the door of the room, a buzzing neon sign read “Vacancy,” and perhaps a coin-operated Magic Fingers box vibrated the bed.