Boots Court

Arthur Boots built his motor court at the corner Carthage called the Crossroads of America, where Route 66 met the Jefferson Highway. He and his wife Ilda opened it in 1939, with his Red Horse service station as the office: eight rooms in the Streamline Moderne style, a carport beside each, and, as the advertising said, a radio in every room. At $2.50 a night it was expensive on purpose, to keep out unsavory guests. Ples and Grace Neeley bought it in 1942, the year Clark Gable stayed in room 6; he came back in 1947 and took room 10.

The Neeleys added a five-room building at the back in 1946, with parking beneath the rooms and no room 13. The professional wrestler Ruben Asplin and his wife Rachel bought it in 1948, and in the 1950s, as the Boots Motel, it was among the first in the area with television and air conditioning. Then came the long slide: a string of owners, use as low-income housing and a 2003 plan to tear it down. In 2011 the Society for Commercial Archaeology named it one of the ten most endangered roadside attractions in America, and two sisters, Deborah Harvey and Priscilla Bledsaw, bought it, took off a gabled roof, restored the neon and opened some rooms.

The nonprofit Boots Court Foundation bought the motel from them in 2021, and it was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2022. All 13 rooms have been open since 2023, still without televisions.