Munger-Moss Motel

The Munger-Moss Sandwich Shop served travellers on U.S. Route 66 in Missouri circa-1936. Located on the Big Piney River at Devil's Elbow, Missouri until 1945 (at what is now the Elbow Inn), it relocated to Lebanon, Missouri after World War II when construction of a four-lane bypass of U.S. Route 66 in Missouri to Fort Leonard Wood drew traffic away from the original Munger Moss BBQ site.A Munger Moss Motel was added in 1946 as an addition to the Lebanon roadside restaurant and filling station, both of which are now gone.HistoryThe restaurant was named for Nelle Munger, its original owner, and her second husband Emmett Moss. This name was retained after the business was sold to Pete and Jesse Hudson in 1945, relocated to the former Chicken Shanty site in Lebanon in September 1945 and expanded with tourist cabins in 1946. The current owners purchased the motel in June 1971.The lodgings were originally constructed as a 14-room cabin court, an early motel-like accommodation in which each pair of rooms stood as a free-standing building with carports in the middle. Much as cabins and motor courts replaced the campgrounds that had served Depression-era motorists, motels with multiple rooms in one building would replace individual cabins in the 1950s. Space initially allocated to individual carports or open ground between cabins would soon be filled with additional rooms.