In his “Easy Chair” column in the September 1953 issue of Harper's magazine, Utah native son Bernard DeVoto reported on a newly popular form of lodging growing up all over the West—the motel. To him the word motel was an “awkward word, a coinage out of the folksiness that named the suburb's Kan-di-Korner,” but for the motorist it had conveniences that made it superior to a hotel. DeVoto dubbed the motel “the highway's hotel,” a boon to the motorist who wanted nothing to do with tipping bellboys or crowded lobbies but preferred to carry in his own bags to his spacious air-conditioned room.1 According to DeVoto, motels and their towns sprouted like mushrooms along the highways of the West.
DeVoto's commentary is valuable for his accurate description and the signal it sent: motels were here to stay. They were everywhere in the West, along the edges of the highways and lining the town sidewalks. As DeVoto makes clear, motels offered a clean private room, along with the privacy and ease of parking right outside the door. This hybrid form of lodging replaced the old tourist cabins and courts with something new and modern, befitting the postwar era. World War II was over, and the consumer economy was heating up. American families took off in their station wagons looking for the authentic West of cowboys and Indians they saw in movie westerns. Traveling businessmen appreciated the desks, free stationery, and a telephone to the switchboard in every motel room. But the neon lights and the swimming pool were put in to attract the pleasure traveler who chose the motel while driving through what DeVoto dubbed “Motel Town.”
The advent of the motel and its impact on Utah and the Mountain West was more complicated than DeVoto suspected. The building of motels at mid-century was spurred by the expansion of the highways and robust consumer spending but could not have taken place without the investment of capital and labor in the family motel business. Three Utah men played prominent roles in the growth of the motel industry in Utah and the Intermountain West: Ray Knell of Cedar City, Bentley Mitchell of Logan, and Ken Orton of Salt Lake City and Phoenix. All three were actively involved in creating business associations that set up the scaffolding for an extensive western hospitality network. The regional lodging associations were a crucial step in the metamorphosis of the lodging industry from small, family-owned motels to the later dominance of the nationwide motel chains like Holiday Inn.
These three men helped enable the rapid growth of the motel industry in the modern West by founding affiliate organizations on a state, regional, and national level. For the motel entrepreneurs the organizations created networks of friendship that insulated the owners from the uncertainties of expansion in an era of ascendant Fordism.2 In the postwar era of increasing federal control, notably the expansion of the interstate highway system, the trade associations gave the owners a forum to voice their concerns. Small business associations lobbied for relief from the regulatory apparatus of federal oversight. Those associations would later become lifelines to their very existence as family-owned motels became overshadowed by the expansion of corporate lodging chains.
Born in the early twentieth century and reared on farms in Utah, all three of the Utah motel entrepreneurs were embedded in a culture of market capitalism mediated by the Mormon historical experience and values. The Mormon value of cooperation, a hallmark of the faith's approach to capitalism, was reflected in the construction of the associations.3 The Utah motel men drew upon skills gained while serving as missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and through later church leadership experience. Influenced by the Mormon cooperative tradition, they formed networks of business connections to promote tourist lodging. A striking similarity among the Mormon moteliers in their religious practice and family relationships illuminates the cultures of capitalism in the Mormon culture region in Utah and beyond. By seeing the Mormon motel entrepreneurs as embedded in a culture of cooperative and competitive capitalism, we can better understand the forces shaping entrepreneurial tourism in the Intermountain West.4
Utah played an important role in luring tourists to the West. Tourists to Salt Lake City on the Union Pacific Railroad in the late nineteenth century sought glimpses of the private life of polygamy, but local boosters turned their attention to the impressive architecture and birds-eye views of new parks and boulevards. Indeed, Salt Lake City was dubbed the crossroads of the West, and the “See America First” movement originated in the state's capital city. The expansion of state and federal highways across the West ushered in the automobile age, and Utah became a proving ground for roadside businesses like the motel.5
The history of the distinctively American motel has generally been set within the context of highway travel. Historian Warren Belasco argues that the desire for comfort and convenience powered the tourist court mania and subsequent motel boom. While Belasco's book provides an excellent history of the genesis of tourist courts, it ends in 1945, before the postwar economic recovery gave a boost to motel construction.6 John Jakle and Keith Sculle propose that motels followed the same place-product-packaging marketing strategy as gas stations and roadside restaurants, relying heavily on branding to provide a reliable sameness to their customers.7 This story of a trio of Utah motel men demonstrates the importance of business associations in explaining the sudden rise of motels, the subject of DeVoto's 1953 essay in Harper's Magazine.8
The foundation of modern tourism in the West, from highway towns to mountain canyons, began by building places for tourists to stay. The word motel was coined in San Luis Obispo, California, in 1926, but it was not commonly used as a term until the 1950s, at about the same time DeVoto brought it to the attention of his readers.9 The predecessor to the motel was the tourist court, a group of cabins around a filling station with an open court facing the highway. DeVoto did not think highly of the cabins: “A motel may be dingy or uncomfortable but at its worst it is always better than the highway's slum structures, the corn cribs and chicken coops called, offensively to our patriotic tradition, ‘Cabins.’”10 The growth of tourist lodgings in Utah followed the same pattern, of maturing from auto camp to tourist court to motel.11
Motels did not “sprout” up, as DeVoto alleged, but many were built on the foundations of tourist courts already on Main Street. Courts changed their painted signs to electric neon and updated the architecture from homey to modern by building a shared roof and raised portico. Newer motels were built on either side of the highways outside town to lure tired motorists before they reached the downtown business district. The tall neon signs beckoned to the highway traveler who scanned the roadside at dusk to find a place to stay. DeVoto complained that his stay in Motel Town was often sleepless because “the whirr, hum, and flick of passenger cars continue all night.” Because of the glow of the colorful neon outlining the windows and eaves, “The tourist closes the venetian blinds, turns out the lights in his room, and may still read the Gideon Bible without eyestrain.”12 His observations help us appreciate the novelty of the both the architecture and the art form of roadside lodging.
There was money to be made owning a motel in the West as tourism replaced mining and agriculture as a significant economic contributor in the mid-twentieth century. Motel net profits were reported to range from 36 percent in the late 1930s, to around 25 percent in the 1940s. The profit margins resulted from low expenses and almost no debt with dependence on family labor and capital, and the smaller the motel the larger the rate of profit. In the early 1940s, the Tourist Court Journal, the industry trade magazine, was bullish on the future of motels: “An industry returning 26.80 percent of room sales as net profit . . . has reached a point where it will attract large and substantial investors.”13 Many of those investors were couples who could command the labor of their children, and could rely on extended family for investment capital. These small, independently owned businesses became known as the “mom-and-pop” motels, family businesses that had a low threshold to entry with the promise of a profitable return.
Ray Knell
The career of Ray Knell of Cedar City illustrates the complexity of building a motel business and developing associations to promote western travel. Born in 1907, Knell grew up on a cattle ranch in Washington County, Utah. In November 1928 he left for a proselyting mission in California, and after his return he married Clara Bentley in 1932. They relocated to Cedar City, and by the time he purchased a small tourist court in June 1944, they had three children.14 The next year he bought adjacent property along College Street to add new wings of concrete block construction with a brick face for a total of thirty-five rooms.15 Knell transformed the conglomeration of apartments into a motel court called the El Rey that met modern standards of motel keepers. By 1950 the El Rey was featured on the front page of Tourist Court Journal, quintessentially modern with its corrugated aluminum sheeting over the marquee entrance. The basements remained apartment-like with kitchenettes, but the upstairs rooms were very much in vogue: fully carpeted, “furnished in modern lime oak furniture,” with venetian blinds at the windows. Bathrooms were “fully tiled with a different color scheme used in each.”16
The El Rey was part of a postwar business boom in Cedar City aimed at the influx of automobile tourists. Four other motels in town were expanding to meet demand, including one owned by Ray's brother, Rulon Knell, at First South and Main. The Iron County Record proclaimed in May 1946, “When these centers are completed Cedar City will be able to boast of the finest tourist accommodations in this part of the state, with a sufficient number to provide excellent accommodations for a tremendous influx of tourists.”17 Local newspapers pumped up the coverage of new motels and restaurants to the tourists driving the highways to see the national parks.
Cedar City was the gateway to Bryce Canyon and Zion National parks and the Grand Canyon. In the early twentieth century, tourists took the train to the town depot, where the Utah Parks Company transported them by bus to the remote parks.18 With the advent of automobile touring, the number of rail passengers declined, posing a threat to the town's tourist economy. The El Rey staff worked hard to fill the rooms yearlong, not just during the summer rush. To appeal to “the traveling man” they installed telephones in each unit, and they held and forwarded mail for their visitors.19 Aspiring to make money from food service, Knell engaged the services of Errol Woodbury and Anthony Atkins, owners of the Big Hand Café in St. George, to run his “ultra-modern café” on the south side of the motel lot.20 The Cedar City Chamber of Commerce published a handsome booklet touting the town as the “Gateway to the Utah National Parks”; a display of hotels and tourist courts assured the prospective tourist of comfortable accommodations, including El Rey.
El Rey was an early member of the Best Western referral organization. The published history of Best Western features M. K. Guertin as the founder, with his daughter and descendants in prime of place. In truth, Best Western was not founded just by Guertin, but by a group of men including Raymond Knell and John K. (Ken) Orton, both from Utah. The motel men hatched the plan for Best Western at a convention of the United Motor Courts held in Las Vegas in 1946 or 1947. They were concerned that United Motor Courts (with 500 members in thirty-two states) was too relaxed in its standards and that “the benefits it offered members were insufficient.”21 So the group of entrepreneurs founded the rival Best Western and established standards of cleanliness and comfort in an era of improving amenities in the motel business.
Best Western was a boon to motel owners who wanted to refer guests to a motel of similar quality. A guest at any Best Western motel could ask the management to make a reservation at any affiliated motel for future nights. This was a valuable tool in an era when reservations were made by mail. The first guide advertised: “Why take the chance of getting poor accommodations? Let the manager of any best western motel make a reservation for your next night's stop, and be assured of the best. Your room will be held for you, regardless of the time you arrive. Ask the manager for details.”22
Best Western certainly benefited tourists, but it was also critical in creating a network of independently owned motels behind a trusted brand. Knell was in on the ground floor of the rapidly expanding group. As one might expect of a founding member, Knell traveled along Highway 30 as far as Chicago to persuade owners to join the Best Western referral organization. He inspected the properties of other members in the same region to make sure they were meeting Best Western standards.23 He also promoted state and regional lodging associations. By 1950 Knell was the director and then the president of the Utah Motor Court Association.24 He was the longtime president of the Utah Motel Owners Association and organized a Highway 91 Association to promote tourism from Nephi to St. George.25
Associational activity offered Ray and Clara Knell the chance to travel widely. As a member of the national board of governors of the American Motor Hotel Association, he and his wife attended conventions in Cincinnati, Kansas City, and Philadelphia.26 In 1964 the couple took a cross-county drive to Chicago, where he received the award of Royal Motelier at the National Convention of the AMHA, to a Rotary convention in Toronto, and to the New York World's Fair.27
As his motel business expanded, Ray became a well-known community leader in Cedar City. He volunteered to chair the county chapter of the 1953 March of Dimes, and he urged wide distribution of the polio vaccine.28 Knell was also a member of the Lions Club and the Chamber of Commerce. As a chamber member he selected the local architect L. Robert Gardner to design large signs advertising the town, one at the south and the other at the north entry. He brought business to Cedar City, including state conventions of motel owners and the Utah Lions Club.29 He also served his church as a leader in local Mormon congregation from 1956 until 1961, proof of his devotion to his faith and a sign of his natural leadership abilities.30
Knell was an early entrepreneur in the motel industry, who kept his base in Cedar City yet played an important role in launching Best Western and promoting state tourism efforts. The support of his wife and children allowed him to expand and modernize the business and to better the fortunes of his community. He was content to operate one motel and stay in a highway town, but his work to found and serve in trade associations had an impact on the success of motels not only in the state, but in the western region.
Edgar Bentley Mitchell
Like Ray Knell, Utah motel man Edgar Bentley Mitchell remained in his local Cache Valley to build his future. Born in 1911, Mitchell served a Latter-day Saint mission to Tahiti from 1930–1934, where he gained a facility in the Tahitian language and became proficient enough to translate church scripture.31 Upon his return he attended Utah State Agricultural College; there he met Ruth Maughan. They married in 1936, and he worked on the family dry farm in Hansel Valley. In 1944, he was called back to Tahiti to serve as president of the mission. Ruth, who had lived in New Zealand as a child, joined him with their three small children in early 1945.32 Mitchell directed the construction of the first substantial Latter-day Saint meetinghouse and a new residence for the mission president in Papeete. Church dignitaries traveled from Salt Lake City for the dedication in January 1950, and the event was attended by three thousand Tahitians, some from as far as 400 miles away.33 While in Tahiti, Mitchell gained managerial skills and public relations savvy, in addition to his missionary work there.
The stint as mission president abroad emboldened Mitchell to undertake grander schemes than to stay on the family farm. Upon his return to Cache Valley in 1949, Mitchell left ranching to build a career as a motel owner. In 1950 he opened the twenty-three-unit red brick Mitchell Motel on Highway 89 near the college campus. The motel's low profile fit the landscape and allowed guests to drive cars up to the doors of their rooms. Later a second story was added which featured ornamental white wrought iron balconies. A tall neon sign with “Mitchell” stood at the roadway, with m-o-t-e-l spelled out in a sign atop the office wing. A fine combination of traditional materials and modern design, the Mitchell Motel was one of two leading motels in town, along with the Baugh Motel.34
Mitchell was active in many professional associations, and was elected an officer of the Utah Motel Association, Best Western, and the American Motor Hotel Association (AMHA).35 In his brief motel career, Mitchell was more than a regional big wheel. He served as chair of the Board of Governors of the American Motor Hotel Association out of Kansas City, Missouri. In this role he sought feedback from state governors on industry issues such as the newly approved federal highways and the advisability of affiliating with credit card companies. He heard from owners of motor courts and motels from Reno, Nevada, to Alexandria, Virginia.
He was instrumental in having the convention of the AMHA, which had nearly five thousand members, held at the Hotel Utah in Salt Lake City in September 1956.36 The Fourteenth Annual AMHA Convention featured panels such “Protecting Motels in Highway Development,” and “How to Hold Your Guest without a Rope.” Tinged by the distinctively Mormon local culture, the opening day luncheon featured a visit to the Salt Lake Tabernacle for its Thursday organ recital and a Grey Line Bus tour of the city. Saturday evening the convention highlight was a Hawaiian luau with entertainment by the Hawaiian Club of Brigham Young University.37 By the time they left Salt Lake City, the conventioneers would have had a thorough exposure to not only Mormon culture in Utah, but also Pacific Islander dances, as performed by BYU students.
Mitchell was a founding member of the 89’ers International Highway Association, a group of hospitality professionals along Route 89 from Mexico to Canada.38 The 89’ers was organized at the Chamber of Commerce in Flagstaff, Arizona, in September 1955 by a group of hospitality professionals, including owners of motels, cafés, and car dealerships. The center of the 89’ers membership (about 450 people) was Arizona, with about half of the 245 members, and forty-five members in Utah, twenty-nine in Idaho, and thirty-six in Mexico. A month after organizing, the board of directors met at the Hotel Newhouse in Salt Lake City, a hint that many of the directors might have been Utah Mormons.39
The founding meeting in September 1955 generated ideas for publicity, including the making of a record of two songs, “Treasure Trail” and “Beyond the Border.” The plan was for the records to be played in juke boxes and on radio stations, netting the association royalties. Reportedly the record, “I Get my Kicks on 66” had increased the volume of traffic on Highway 66 by 670 percent. In the first few years of the association, the sky was the limit on plans to expand the 89’ers. They forged ahead with the recordings, sent on consignment to Texas, and waited.40
The 89’ers board of directors met annually in October, rotating its location from Kanab, Utah, in 1956 to Jackson, Wyoming, in 1957. Those assembled confronted the dispiriting fact that members were letting their dues lapse and local 89’ers clubs were not attracting sufficient new members.41 Mitchell chaired the brochure committee, the hoped-for remedy to the declining membership. Mitchell proposed “a 10 point, two year schedule of continuous promotional activity built around the brochures,” from one end of Highway 89 to the other. He sent out letters to members, soliciting their membership renewal.42
Members of 89’ers gathered at the third annual meeting in Jackson, Wyoming, where they took excursions through the Tetons, enjoyed a chuck wagon buffet supper, and spent a day in business meetings capped off by a banquet of prime rib and “Grand international ball,” all for “just ten bucks.”43 While the businessmen and their wives socialized, the officers kept up the drumbeat of soliciting advertisements for the brochure and reminding members to send in their dues. An infusion of capital would be needed to finance the printing of 50,000 full color brochures, estimated by Paragon Press to be close to four thousand dollars.44 But there were signs of trouble: the postponement of a motor cavalcade of 89’ers to Alberta in June and the cancellation of plans for a movie promoting Highway 89.45 Exactly when the 89’ers folded is unclear, but it appears that the organization collapsed in 1958 or 1959, a victim of declining membership and a nationwide recession.
The death of Bentley Mitchell may have played a part in the failure of the 89’ers. An experienced pilot, he was returning from picking up a new Cessna 157 in Wichita for a local aviation firm when his plane crashed in bad weather on December 18, 1959, with fatal results.46 His widow, Ruth, was left to rear their six children and manage the motel.
Mrs. E. Bentley Mitchell, as she was known, sustained the success of the Mitchell Motel. Due to its location, the motel won a large share of business from Utah State University. The need to accommodate academic visitors challenged the racial discrimination practices of small town Utah. In 1963 Professor George E. Bohart had reserved rooms at the rival Baugh Motel for the expected guests for an apiculture conference, only to discover a few days before their arrival that the motel refused to rent rooms to African Americans. Indeed, according to Bohart, Mr. Baugh remarked that “negroes were personally repulsive to him.” Disgusted by the motel owner's bigotry, Bohart cancelled the reservation at the Baugh Motel and arranged for the group to stay at the competing Mitchell Motel, where they did accept guests of color but only if sponsored by the university.47 Ruth Mitchell's years of missionary work in the Pacific Islands might have made her more welcoming to persons of color; whatever the case, her actions in this incident provide further proof that she was a shrewd businessperson.
As a motelier, Mitchell promoted tourism in the state. She headed a local committee to welcome a group of thirty-four French tourists on a “Visit USA” tour in 1962. She arranged visits with the mayor and the university president, and the tourists were treated to a picnic, square dance, and marshmallow roast. Their efforts won the praise of Jim Cannon, director of the Utah Tourist and Publicity Council, who said of the Cache Valley locals: “They put into excellent use that good old Utah hospitality we're always hearing about.”48 The business career of Ruth Mitchell indicates the importance of the men's wives to the success of Utah's motel builders.
Bentley Mitchell and his wife, Ruth, used the Mitchell Motel in Logan as the base for promoting motel growth through the West. In his activity as an officer in 89’ers and the AMHA, Mitchell was embedded in national lodging networks that allowed him to influence national trends in motel keeping. Indeed, his influence seems far out of proportion to his actual stake in the industry, but his ability to work within organizations and promote their goals enabled him to wield outsize power within the industry. Bentley's untimely death ended a promising career, but Ruth carried on his legacy.
Ken Orton
Before Knell and Mitchell built their motels, Utah native John K. “Ken” Orton inauspiciously launched his career in hospitality. Born in 1906 in Sandy, Utah, his interest in travel began when he served a Latter-day Saint mission in Tahiti. Orton was one of ten missionaries in all of Tahiti charged with bolstering the faith of the “Saints” and finding more converts. The elders translated gospel tracts and scripture into the native language and sold copies of the mission newspaper throughout the islands. He was released in November 1927 after nearly three years of service.49 His mission activities gave him valuable experiences in publishing and exposed him to global tourism.
After Orton's return home, he married Frankie Graves, and they had two sons, Ken Jr. and Russell. He attended a local business college, and in 1930 he joined the staff of the Improvement Era, the major magazine of the LDS church. Within several years he became its manager.50 He got into motels as a sideline. Frankie later recalled, “My husband, by working hard at extra jobs such as keeping books at night, selling old cars, etc., had saved enough money to buy a small café on Main Street. He operated it for a short time, then sold it and bought two homes which he later sold to purchase the property on South State Street.”51 By the late 1930s he operated two small motels on South State Street in Salt Lake City, the thirteen-room Ken-Ray and the seventeen-room Travelers Motor Lodge. The Ken-Ray was a joint venture with Ray Sudbury, who was married to his wife's cousin.52 Family capital was vital to getting in on the ground floor of owning a motel.
In 1942, Orton founded Bookcraft Publishing Company, upon the advice of church president Heber J. Grant, who wanted to see a competitor to Deseret Book owned by the prominent Cannon family. The company's first publication, Gospel Standards, was a collection of Grant's conference talks. The second book, The Gospel Kingdom, a collection of talks by early church president John Taylor, became a staple of the church's curriculum for men. Bookcraft found success in selling its books and magazines to the Mormon reading audience. Orton's son later recalled, “‘It was a real family business in those days. . . . Dad made the publishing decisions, mother processed the orders and my brother and I helped with the packing and mailing after school.’”53 Orton appears to have been firmly embedded in the center of Mormon business and culture, but he had set his sights on a future as a motelier.
During World War II, Orton was among those individuals from seventeen states who organized the American Motor Hotel Association in Denver in 1943. He was selected as President of AMHA with the goal of lobbying more effectively in Washington, DC to fight rent control regulations that did not allow motel owners to raise rates.54 As president he stated that in addition to promoting the “motor-hotel industry,” the AMHA was also seeking “a solution to some unfair, and unworkable regulations of the rent control program.” Regulation 9A stipulated that a guest who had stayed longer than sixty days had to be offered a monthly rate, a regulation that did not apply to hotels. In a news article in the Tourist Court Journal, Orton explained they needed members to supply funds to open an office in Washington, DC to lobby for their needs. Orton was ultimately unsuccessful in that fight, and motels remained limited in profits because of the regulation that they had to provide cheap housing for the many returning soldiers, and were prevented from raising their rates. It was not until 1947 that the regulations were lifted; still the importance of AMHA as a voice for motel owners was undeniable.55
Orton's travel for the AMHA broadened his perspective. The story is told that during the war Ken went to Tucson to watch his nephew play in a football game for the University of Utah. It might have been the climate, but more likely he was attracted to Arizona by the business possibilities emerging in Phoenix.56 By 1946 he had sold his Utah motels for a profit, resigned from the Improvement Era, and found a partner to run Bookcraft, Marvin W. Wallin. The family moved to Phoenix, where Ken bought the forty-six-room El Rancho Hotel at 1300 West Van Buren Street and enlarged it to seventy units.57 His profits from Bookcraft were channeled into his hospitality business at a propitious moment, but he needed more capital for expansion.58
Orton found a business partner, Al Stovall, a transplanted Midwesterner who owned manganese mines. Stovall was originally from a farm in Kansas, a descendant of Scots Irish migrants. He took banjo lessons and formed a traveling band that performed throughout the Midwest at dance halls and theaters. He married, bought a small oil field in eastern Kansas, and invested the profits in his first motel, The Planets, in Ellinwood, Kansas. It was while touring Arizona with his band in 1939 that Stovall shrewdly realized that the world war would require steel. He sold The Planets and put the proceeds into manganese mines in Arizona, expanding to over thirty manganese mines in the West. His businesses supplied a major part of the nation's mineral supply during World War II, and he reportedly became known as America's “Mr. Manganese.”59
Millionaire Stovall and motelier Orton were well-matched partners in supplying rooms for the tourists who came to Arizona to enjoy the winter sun. Their motel empire expanded rapidly: Mission Motel on East Van Buren (1946), Royal Palms Inn on Camelback Road (1947), and El Rancho motels in Yuma, Arizona, and Needles, California. But it appears they did not have enough capital to expand as rapidly as they did; in April 1949 the electrical contractor for the Royal Palms sued the partners for failure to pay them for work done to repair the kitchen, bar, and furnace room, and to construct the north and south units.60 With his partner investors, in 1948 Orton obtained a $75,000 mortgage from Beneficial Life Insurance Company of Utah, perhaps against his life insurance policy.61 Still they had trouble unloading the property and in early 1949 Ken wrote to his son, Russell: “We are still in a mess as far as the Royal Palms is concerned. We have tried to sell it, but have had no takers.” He blamed Stovall for talking him into the venture, although he thought the overhead was too high for the take. He confessed to his son, “Getting into the motor court business involves a great deal of cash, more cash than perhaps you realize, and each day loans are getting more difficult to make in order to go into this business.”62 A few months later, they were “out of money, and none of the members including myself seems to be willing to put in more personal funds.” It appeared the person who held the second mortgage would have to take ownership and the next month they tried to get a settlement. Eventually, they were able to extract themselves from the situation.63
Meanwhile, the other motels were doing quite well. El Rancho took in $9,000 gross in May 1949, a 50 percent increase over the previous year, enough to pay for installation of air conditioning units in the ten new units in the back.64 The partners built their brand with the Desert Inn, Desert Hills Motel, and Desert Sun Hotel in Phoenix, supported by investments from two other families, the Miners and the Wesolowskis.65 Later the Miners pulled out, and Vernon and Rachel Lunt, who owned a garage and motel in Salt Lake City, joined the group of investors.66
The Desert Inn would become the prototype for their collection of luxury motor hotels built by Desert Enterprises, Incorporated.67 In 1952 they built the 180-room Desert Hills at 2707 East Van Buren on Route 60 into Phoenix from Tempe. Orton took responsibility for the construction, and it was locally regarded as “an outstandingly beautiful hotel, with fine dining facilities, swimming, pool, shuffleboard courts and all the other accoutrements of a fine resort.”68 The architecture was typical of the brand's motels, two-story buildings with open balconies accessible by decorative stairways made of cement blocks accented by weeping mortar, all painted in light pastel colors.69 To bring in more cash flow, Bookcraft published Orton's Courting America, a guide to fine motels and hotels across the nation. The guide referred to lodging with an array of terms: motel, motor court, and the up-market term motor hotel.70
Orton stepped away from his successful hospitality business when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints called him to serve as mission president in Tahiti, the site of his missionary service as a young man. In late March 1953, he and his wife, Frankie, flew to Tahiti.71 One of his first efforts was to establish better relations with the French colonial authorities; he was successful in obtaining three long-sought passports and in increasing the number of missionaries allowed from eight to twelve. He was instrumental in obtaining a donation of dental equipment from the church. Attendance at the meetings rose.72
With Orton away, the motel business was not as profitable. His son, Russell, took a break from college in Colorado to manage the family motel portfolio. His letters to his father are full of apologies for falling profits and labor problems. He wrote in August 1953, “As you will notice business has dropped off very badly this past month. We were down from last year for the first time. I have been checking and find that it is true all over town but we are going to make a concerted effort to get out more and try to drum up more business.”73 Russell was too inexperienced to run the business and did not have the necessary authority to manage the key employees.
In April 1954 Ken Orton suffered an attack of kidney stones and was released from his mission a month later. He underwent surgery in Salt Lake City and returned home to recover.74 Back in Phoenix, Orton expanded his empire with a grand motor hotel. In March 1955 Desert Enterprises built the 107-room Hotel Desert Sun on Grand Avenue. A full-page advertisement for the motel in the Tourist Court Journal proclaimed it “One of the Southwest's most modern motor hotels.” No longer a mere motel, the motor inn's “distinctive rambling exterior, highlighted by a trapezoid swimming pool, is complemented inside by a large dining room, coffee shop, banquet room, lobby, and private dining room.”75 Barker Brothers, a contract furnishing company out of Los Angeles who had furnished and decorated the hotel, took out a full-page advertisement in Tourist Court Journal.76 The renowned photographer Maynard Parker highlighted the modernist elements of the motor hotel in the publicity shots.77 Orton and his associates had made the leap from highway motels to luxurious urban motor hotels, complete with dining and meeting facilities that provided venues for local service organizations and private parties.
Orton's final project was the Tahiti Inn, opened in 1959 at 2950 East Van Buren. The inn project was part of a tradition in the American West of Tiki bars and restaurants reminiscent of the South Pacific, but he must have been partially inspired by his nostalgia for the islands of Tahiti. Sadly, in the fall of 1959 Orton suffered a fatal heart attack.78 After his death, management of the properties fell into other hands as one son became a medical doctor and the other pursued a career in theater management that took him to Los Angeles and New York City.79 The management was turned over to others, but the four families kept their financial interest in the Desert Sun properties until the 1970s and in one property into the 1990s.80 By building the motels as tourism to Arizona bloomed, the legacy owners laid a foundation for the growth of tourism in the West.
From Tahiti to Salt Lake City to Phoenix, Orton rose to become a regional star in the hospitality industry. From the humble Ken-Ray to the cosmopolitan Desert Hills, Orton traveled an upward trajectory, nurturing business associations that helped him amass considerable wealth by building motels in the West. His mission experiences in Tahiti complemented his managerial experience in the growing hospitality industry in desert Southwest. By following his career, we better understand how the humble highway motel gave rise to the fancy motor hotels of the urban West.
The story of the three Utah motel men, with its uncanny parallel in the mission experiences of Mitchell and Orton in Tahiti, helps us better understand the growth of motels in the West, as noted by DeVoto. The men (and their wives) were key players in building business associations that laid the foundation for the automobile tourism infrastructure of tourist courts and motels. Their service experience in church and civic organizations garnered them executive skills valued in the associations they founded and served in the western United States. They were comfortable associating with the motel owners from other states and were adept at forming long-distance business relationships. Their Mormon mission proselyting skills were also put to good use as they signed up new members. Loyal to their own church, they tended to be loyal to organizations they felt would benefit them and others. From their church leadership experiences, they knew how to create hierarchies and maintain order.
The associations they founded helped create a culture of capitalism that softened the edges of competitive enterprise. The interdependent networks of state, regional, and national associations helped preserve their independence in an increasingly corporate economy that was becoming more subject to state and federal regulation. The associations were effective proto chains, offering benefits like making reservations before chains like Holiday Inn dominated the hospitality industry. The organizations were not mere fraternities, but became lobbying organizations in an era of expansion of federal influence.
The business role of the wives of these three men is more difficult to assess. Clara Bentley Knell and Frankie Graves Orton were known as supportive of their husband's careers, but only Ruth Mitchell is visible to us because she stayed in the business after her husband's death. We can only surmise that friendships were fostered as the wives of motel owners accompanied their husbands to professional meetings. The women dressed up for the banquets and attended women-only teas and tours. The conventions gave the small-town bourgeoisie a chance to see the big city, go shopping, and tour museums. The trips also afforded the couples a getaway from the daily cares of being on call day and night for their motel guests. Their trips were written up in the local papers, giving them a cachet that elevated their standing in small-town society. The history of their contributions has yet to be written but is necessary to fully understand the public success of their husbands.
The original motel builders depended on family labor and the capital from extended family networks and investments like life insurance. As family patterns changed and federal highways directed traffic away from small towns, the legacy motels were destined to fade in importance. The number of motels peaked in the 1960s with 61,000 in operation but began to decline by 1965.81 The end of the “do-it-yourself” era led to the shrinking of the number of family-owned motels, and by the early 1960s small owners faced stiff competition from chains like Holiday Inn and Travelodge.82 The legacy motel owners struggled to stay afloat, and they began selling off unprofitable motels in the early 1960s as the chains spread nationwide. Expanding job opportunities for the wives of moteliers, who could make better money at a paid job, and the college-bound children of the owners, were key factors in the decline of the family-owned business. It would be erroneous to conclude that the chains destroyed motels. Instead, legacy motels were relinquished by their founders as property changed hands. Families who wanted to get into the business could do so by purchasing a franchise from a chain with much less risk and a lot less effort.
The original highway motels have met various fates. Ray Knell's oldest son, Douglas, who had grown up taking pitchers of ice water to the guests of his father's motel properties, took over the management. After the death of Douglas Knell in 2012, the establishment was sold to become the Baymont by Wyndham Cedar City, part of the largest hotel franchise company in the world.83 Utah State University purchased the Mitchell Motel to serve as its East Campus Office Building.
A large share of the legacy motels was sold to Asian Indian immigrants. Orton's first property, the Desert Inn, was sold to Surendra G. Patel in 1976. The Patels were part of a wave of immigrants from Gujarat, India, who bought the motels sold by the sons and daughters of those who built them. Today in Utah, there is a Patel motel at every exit on I-15 between St. George and Salt Lake City, and several in every town along the Wasatch front or near a national park. Like their predecessors who founded motels, the Patels rely on family capital and labor, and a strong national business association, the Asian American Hotel Owners Association.84 The integration of the Patels into the western lodging business, and its impact on Utah, is another story.
The Mormon moteliers—Knell, Mitchell and Orton—laid the groundwork for future Mormon hospitality industry giants: Earl Holding and Bill Marriott. Holding, the owner of Little America and Grand America hotels in Wyoming and Utah, built his empire from humble beginnings in Casper, Wyoming, in the 1950s. Marriott's hotel business did not begin until the 1950s and then primarily on the east coast, but his father's Utah Mormon roots profoundly shaped his own business values.85 Utah's motel men in the Intermountain West created the foundation for the transition from small family businesses to motor hotels to the cosmopolitan resort hotels of today's West.
What Bernard DeVoto would have written about the hospitality palaces of today is open for speculation. However soft his pillow, clean his sheets, or tasty the room service offerings, he would have found something to complain about. And if we were to read one of his columns, we would chuckle and nod our heads in agreement. But he might be sad to see the deterioration of the mid-century highway motels where at one time the owners welcomed you warmly at the front desk and their children brought pitchers of ice water to your room. Nostalgia for old motels has spurred their adaptive reuse into “hip boutique accommodations.” Renovated motels, with their open balconies, colorful neon signs, and drive-up convenience are attractive to younger tourists searching for an authentic overnight in distinctive locations.86 Perhaps the revival of the old motels will restore a sense of community to motel towns all over the West. And when the tourists raise a glass while relaxing by the pool, maybe they will give a toast to the original motel builders of the West.
Notes
Bernard DeVoto, The Easy Chair (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1955), 119–26. I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Charles Redd Center at Brigham Young University; student research assistants Mark Lowe, Sam Willis, Heather Budge, and Ellis Diane Benson; and my collaborator in telling the story of Utah's historic motels, Lisa-Michele Church. And in memory of Thomas F. Rugh, who never tired of driving me around to the fascinating old motels of the West.
Lyn Spillman, Solidarity in Strategy: Making Business Meaningful in American Trade Associations (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2012).
The historical roots of the Mormon cooperative approaches toward capitalism spring from the communitarian ideals of early Mormonism, as well as Brigham Young's resistance to the commercialism spurred by the completion of the transcontinental railroad. See Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958); Leonard J. Arrington, Feramorz Y. Fox, Dean L. May, Building the City of God: Community and Cooperation Among the Mormons (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1976). For case studies see Matthew C. Godfrey and Michael Hubbard MacKay, eds., Business and Religion: The Intersection of Faith and Finance (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2019). By 1930, Mormon enterprise was fully integrated into the national economy, see Thomas G. Alexander, Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 1890–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986); Ethan R. Yorgason, Transformation of the Mormon Culture Region (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003); for commentary see Jackson Lears, “The Mormon Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,” New Republic, October 18, 2012. The peculiar nature of Mormon capitalism has drawn renewed interest with the disclosures of the immense wealth of the corporate church, see for example, Ian Lovett and Rachel Levy, “The Mormon Church Amassed $100 Billion,” Wall Street Journal, February 8, 2020.
Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and Walmart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); “Interchange: The History of Capitalism,” Journal of American History 101, no. 2 (September 2014): 503–536. My thinking has been influenced by Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); and Jonathan Levy, Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012).
Earl Pomeroy, In Search of the Golden West: The Tourist in Western America (New York: Knopf, 1957); Hal Rothman, Devil's Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth-Century American West (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000); David M. Wrobel and Patrick T. Long, eds., Seeing and Being Seen: Tourism in the American West (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001). For Utah's role in the expansion of tourism in the West, see Marguerite S. Shaffer, See America First: Tourism and National Identity, 1880–1940 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2001); Philip Gruen, Manifest Destinations: Cities and Tourists in the Nineteenth-Century American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014); and Susan S. Rugh, “Branding Utah: Industrial Tourism in the Postwar American West,” Western Historical Quarterly 37, no. 4 (Winter 2006): 445–72.
Warren James Belasco, Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel, 1910–1945 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979).
Belasco, Americans on the Road; John A. Jakle, Keith A. Sculle, Jefferson S. Rogers, The Motel in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1996).
Jakle et al., The Motel in America.
“First Motel,” Tourist Court Journal, February 1955, 11; “The Great American Roadside,” Fortune, September 1934, 53.
DeVoto, The Easy Chair, 122.
Lisa-Michele Church, “Early Roadside Motels and Motor Courts of St. George,” Utah Historical Quarterly 80, no. 1 (Winter 2012); Susan S. Rugh, “Selling Sleep: The Rise and Fall of Utah's Historic Motels,” in Utah in the Twentieth Century, eds. Brian Q. Cannon and Jessie L. Embry (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2009), 65–87.
DeVoto, The Easy Chair, 121.
“Operating Averages for 1939 Show Slightly Better Returns on Investment for Tourist Courts Examined,” July 1940, 1; “1943 Operating Averages,” September 1944, 13; “1942 Operating Averages,” February 1943, 15, all in Tourist Court Journal.
Familysearch.org/tree/find/id, s.v., KWCJ-GWG, Raymond Knell; Church History Biographical Database, s.v. “Raymond Knell,” history.churchofjesuschrist.org/chd/landing.
“Ray Knell to Enlarge El Rey Motel,” Iron County (UT) Record, October 25, 1945.
Dorothy Wade, “Tourist Court with the Bargain Basement,” Tourist Court Journal, June 1950, 6.
“Work Progressing Rapidly on Cedar City Tourist Courts,” Iron County (UT) Record, May 30, 1946.
Janet B. Seegmiller, “Selling the Scenery: Chauncey and Gronway Parry and the Birth of Southern Utah's Tourism and Movie Industries,” Utah Historical Quarterly 80, no. 3 (Summer 2012): 40–55; Thomas G. Alexander, “Red Rock and Gray Stone: Senator Reed Smoot, the Establishment of Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks, and the Rebuilding of Downtown Washington, D.C.,” Pacific Historical Review 72 (February 2003): 1–38.
Wade, “Tourist Court,” Tourist Court Journal, June 1950, 6.
“Modern Café to Be Included in Motel Building Program,” Iron County (UT) Record, November 22, 1945.
Best Western International, The First Name in Hospitality (Phoenix: Best Western International, 2006), 14–15; Douglas Knell, interview by Susan S. Rugh, Cedar City, Utah, July 31, 2010.
“A Guide to Best Western Motels,” 1948, Best Western box 1, Hilton Hospitality Industry Archives, Massad Family Research Library, University of Houston, Houston, Texas.
First Name in Hospitality, 19, 26, 61.
“Motor Court Owners Schedule State Convention in Cedar,” Iron County (UT) Record, August 4, 1949.
“Highway Group Organized for Southern Utah,” Iron County (UT) Record, October 20, 1955.
“Ray Knells Travel East to Motor Hotel Confab,” October 24, 1957; “Local Motel Operator Appointed to Board of Governors,” January 29, 1959; “State Motel Assn. Chief Attends National Convention,” October 26, 1961, all in Iron County (UT) Record.
“Ray Knells Return from Rotary Confab,” June 18, 1964; “Ray Knell Accorded Awards at National Convention,” July 2, 1964, both in Iron County (UT) Record.
“Vaccinations Urged for Polio Protection by County Chairman,” Iron County (UT) Record, June 28, 1956.
“Appointment Made to Fill Junior Commerce Vacancy,” July 24, 1941; “Nominations Made for Chamber of Commerce Elections,” December 14, 1944; “Lions Club Approves Nine New Members,” December 21, 1944, all in Iron County (UT) Record.
“Second Ward Bishopric,” February 9, 1956; “Theron Ashcroft Named Second Ward Bishop,” June 1, 1961, both in Iron County (UT) Record.
Edgar B. Mitchell journal, November 1930–July 1931, MSS 13227, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah (CHL).
Church News, September 9, 1944, 1, 12.
“Tahitian Mission Breaks Ground for New Tabernacle, Mission Headquarters,” February 21, 1948; “Leader in Tahiti—Elder Cowley on First Visit to Mission,” September 1, 1948, 15, both in Church News.
Chrome Postcard, Mitchell Motel, Mike Roberts for Intermountain Tourist Supply.
“Tourist Industry Aids All Utahns, says UMA Office,” Vernal (UT) Express, October 8, 1959.
Victor Anderson to Bentley Mitchell, May 30, 1956; Victor Anderson to AMHA Board of Directors, June 12, 1956; R. R. Price to Bentley Mitchell, September 9, 1956; Fred Haverland to Bentley Mitchell, September 10, 1956, box 3, fd. 4, all located in Edgar Bentley Mitchell Papers, MSS 322 (hereafter Mitchell Papers), Special Collections and Archives, Merrill-Cazier Library, Utah State University, Logan, Utah (hereafter MCUSU).
Fourteenth Annual Convention Program and Motel Show Program, 1956, American Motor Hotel Association; and AMHA News Bulletin, September 1956, box 3, fd. 2, both in Mitchell Papers.
Clint Pumphrey and Jim Kichas, “From Tire Tracks to Treasure Trail: Cooperative Boosterism Along U.S. Highway 89,” Utah Historical Quarterly 85, no. 3 (2017): 257–72.
Minutes of the First Annual Meeting of Members of 89’ers International Highway Association, Inc., September 23, 1955; Minutes, September 24, 1955, 1; Articles of Incorporation of 89’ers International Highway Association, Inc., box 1, fd. 3, all located in Mitchell Papers.
Board of Directors meeting minutes, October 24, 1955, box 1, fd. 3, Mitchell Papers. A copy of the record produced by Latin Aire Records, Nogales, Sonora, Mexico is in box 2, fd. 4, Mitchell Papers.
Official Minutes, Second Annual Membership Meeting, Kanab, Utah, October 12, 1956; Official Minutes, Annual Board of Directors Meeting, Afton, Wyoming, October 9, 1957, box 1, fd. 4, Mitchell Papers.
Official Minutes, 1957, 3, Mitchell Papers.
89’ers International Highway Ass'n Inc., Third Annual Membership Meeting registration flyer; 89’ers International Highway Ass'n Inc., Official Bulletin, May 1957, both in box 1, fd. 11, Mitchell Papers.
Bentley Mitchell to Paul Stevig, n.d.; Dean Wallin to Bentley Mitchell, May 28, 1958, box 2, fd. 9, Mitchell Papers.
Ernie Saran to the directors, members, and friends of the 89ers . . . , April 26, 1958, box 2, fd. 9, Mitchell Papers.
“Guide to the Bentley Mitchell Papers, 1950–1959,” Mitchell Papers, citing Logan (UT) Herald Journal, December 20–21, 1959.
Bob Parson, “Civil Rights in Cache Valley, Utah,” 1986, box 4, fd. 21, Utah State University History Records 1862–2019, MCUSU. This incident is evidence of the pervasiveness of discrimination against Black travelers throughout the nation that would be addressed in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. See Mia Bay Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021).
“Logan Residents Prove Again That Hospitality Is Worthwhile,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 7, 1962.
Tahiti Papeete Mission history, 1900–1984, September 18, 1927, 125, LR 3039 45, CHL.
Paul W. Pollock, Arizona's Men of Achievement (Phoenix: P. W. Pollock, 1958), 1:68.
“Frankie G. Orton—Her Story” January 21, 1962, Family Search, ancestors.familysearch.org/en/KW84-NPL/frankie-lenore-graves-1901–1980.
“Frankie G. Orton—Her Story,” 2.
Roger Pusey, “Bookcraft Celebrates Its 50th,” Deseret News, September 13, 1992.
“Courts Organize,” Tourist Court Journal, February 1944, 8–9.
“Incorporation,” August 1944; “Utah Get Tax Increase,” September 1945, 23, both in Tourist Court Journal.
Pollock, Arizona's Men of Achievement, 68.
“Frankie G. Orton—Her Story.”
Articles of Incorporation of Bookcraft, Inc., State of Arizona Incorporation Commission, October 14, 1954, RN 19540041579, Docket 1447, p. 377, Maricopa County Recorder, accessed July 1, 2021, recorder.maricopa.gov/recdocdata/.
Pollock, Arizona's Men of Achievement, 70–72.
Notice and Claim of Lien, 1949, RN19490506, Docket 0383, p. 479, Maricopa County Recorder, accessed July 1, 2021, recorder.maricopa.gov/recdocdata.
1948, RN19480831, Docket 0266, p. 339, Maricopa County Recorder, accessed July 1, 2021, recorder.maricopa.gov/recdocdata.
Ken Orton to Russell Orton, February 26, 1949, Orton family letters in possession of Ann Whiting Orton, Salt Lake City, Utah, copies in author's possession.
Ken Orton to Russell Orton, May 23, 1949, Orton family letters.
Ken Orton to Russell Orton, May 23, 1949, Orton family letters.
Pollock, Arizona's Men of Achievement, 68; “Frankie G. Orton—Her Story.”
1940 United States Federal Census, Salt Lake City Precinct, Salt Lake City, Ward 6, digital image, Vernon G. Lunt, accessed July 2, 2021, familysearch.org.
American Hotel Association Directory Corporation, 1955–1956 Hotel Red Book (New York, 1955).
Pollock, Arizona's Men of Achievement, 68.
Architectural observations by author in visits to the motel buildings in 2011.
J. K. Orton, Orton's Courting America: A Guide to America's Finest and Best Operated Motor Courts ([Phoenix]: Courting America, 1951).
“Elder Orton Called to Preside in Tahiti,” Church News, February 7, 1953.
Tahiti Papeete Mission history, 1900–1984, March 31, 1953, box 2, fd. 2, LR 3039 2; “Church Donates Dental Equipment,” Church News, May 23, 1953.
Russell Orton to Ken Orton, August 12, 1953, Orton family letters.
Tahiti Papeete Mission history, 1900–1984, May 12, 1954, LR 3039 44.
Tourist Court Journal, July 1955, 13.
Tourist Court Journal, July 1955, 13. In 1956 Barker Brothers opened a location in Phoenix at 221 East Camelback Road. Advertisement, Tourist Court Journal, May 1956, 5.
Desert Hills, Swimming Pool, 3352; Desert Inn, Lobby, 296796, 296809; Desert Sun Lobby, 296812, in Maynard L. Parker Negatives, Photographs, and Other Materials, Huntington Digital Library; “Beauty and the Budget: A Study of the Contract Furnisher, A Staff Report,” Tourist Court Journal, September 1959, 28.
F. G. Orton; “John K. Orton: A Memorial,” American Biographical Encyclopedia Arizona Edition: Profiles of Prominent Personalities (Phoenix: Paul W. Pollock, 1969), 3:272; Obituary clippings, October 28, 1959, Orton family collection, copy in author's possession; Kara Newman, “A New Golden Age for the Tiki Bar,” Atlantic, June 5, 2018.
“Obituary: Russell B. Orton,” Deseret News, November 27, 2003, accessed online.
Al Stovall as well as his children had an interest in Desert Inn and Desert Hills Hotel into the 1970s, as did Eugene Wesolowski, presumably a partner of Stovall in the mining business. 1940 United States Federal Census, Supervisorial District 3, Pima, Arizona, enumeration district 10–77, sheet 9B, line 55, digital image, Eugene Wesolowski, accessed July 2, 2021, ancestry.com.
American Automobile Association, Post-war Travel Trends, Survey by the American Automobile Association [1945], 11, California State Automobile Association Archives, San Francisco, California; James V. Malone, “Motels—A Big Opportunity for Builders,” American Builder, February 1950, 116; Jakle et al., The Motel in America, 18–20.
From its start in 1953, Holiday Inn had grown to 300 motor hotels; Howard Johnson had 134; and Travelodge had 216 motels. “Special Research Report on a Dynamic and Changing Industry,” Hotel/Motor Hotel Monthly, October 1962, 17–31.
First Name in Hospitality, 61; “About Us,” Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, accessed June 4, 2021, corporate.wyndhamhotels.com/about-us/; Familysearch.org/tree/find/id, s.v., KWZN-L83, John Douglas Knell.
“About Us,” Asian American Hotel Owners Association, accessed March 18, 2022, aahoa.com/about-aahoa.
J. W. Marriott Jr. and Kathi Ann Brown, The Spirit to Serve: Marriott's Way (New York: HarperBusiness, 1997).
Patrick Sisson, “Motel Revivalism: How Hipster Hoteliers Created a New Roadside Attraction,” Curbed.com, June 22, 2018, archive.curbed.com/2018/6/22/17493336/motel-midcentury-design-hotel-lodging-adaptive-reuse; Christina Poletto, “Upstate Motels Make a Comeback, With an Aim to Captivate,” New York Times, September 3, 2021, nytimes.com/2021/09/03/realestate/catskill-motels-comeback.html.