Today in History—December 12: Checking in at the First Motel

If you were driving your shiny new Model T—with its 10-gallon tank—from San Francisco to Los Angeles, what were your options for stopping along the way? Hotels existed, of course, but they were pricey. Auto camping was also an option for travelers willing to pitch a tent or sleep in their cars. But what if you wanted something in between?

One hundred years ago today, the world’s first motel opened, in San Luis Obispo, California. Architect brothers Arthur and Alfred Heineman launched their Milestone Mo-Tel as a pit stop between San Francisco and Los Angeles, about 200 miles in either direction, considered an ambitious but doable travel day in 1925. It was advertised as the “most delightful and complete motorist’s hotel in the world.”

The Milestone Mo-Tel was modeled after the Mission Santa Barbara, with red-tiled roofs and white stucco walls. It offered 15 bungalows, some with kitchenettes. Orange trees framed the windows so that guests could pick fruit from their rooms. Each two-room bungalow cost $1.25 per night (about $23 today) and offered bathrooms with hot water—a luxury along a highway that was only recently paved.

As for the name? Legend says the original plan—Milestone Motor Hotel—was shortened because the sign painter couldn’t fit all the letters. Whether by typography or intent, that was the day motor hotel became the portmanteau motel.

The number of cars on the road was skyrocketing. Henry Ford had given us the assembly line and the Model T about two decades earlier. Americans were falling in love with the open road, and the Heinemans were prescient of the way cars were changing American life. A new constellation of roadside businesses—lodging, gas stations, diners—was already taking shape.

The brothers intended to make the Milestone Mo-Tel a chain, but the Great Depression interrupted that plan. The original Milestone Mo-Tel went into foreclosure, changed hands a few times, and reopened as the Motel Inn before eventually closing in 1991. Most of it was bulldozed in 2006, but the original bell tower still stands, a mile marker of early American road-trip culture.