Wagon Wheel Motel, Café and Station

The Wagon Wheel Motel, Café and Station in Cuba, Missouri, is a 19-room independently owned historic U.S. Route 66 restored motel which has been serving travelers since 1938. The site opened as a café in 1936; the motel has remained in continuous operation since 1938. The motel rooms were fully restored in 2010, adding modern amenities such as HDTV and wireless Internet.A filling station which once also occupied the original 1936 property is no longer in active use; the original Wagon Wheel Café restaurant is now a retail store filled with jewelery, purses, décor, Route 66 books, T-shirts and a few original Wagon Wheel antiques. The property has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 2003.HistoryOne of the oldest motels on US Route 66, the Wagon Wheel Cabins consisted in 1938 of three stone lodging buildings. Set back 200 feet from the road, these originally provided a few rooms each plus an office and garages for motorcar storage at a time when cabins or cottages in most tourist courts were simple single-room structures. The restaurant, filling station and signage were located at roadside.The original buildings were constructed using local Ozark sandstone and designed in the Tudor Revival style by stonemason and builder Leo Friesenhan. Original owners Margaret and Robert Martin ran the motel until 1946, by which time the accommodations had been expanded, converting garages to motel units and bringing the site up to fourteen rooms. The filling station was leased to Marathon Oil Company from 1936 to 1941 and operated by Joe and Clara Slowensky.