(first posted 6/14/2013) When we’re rambling through the remote corners of the American West in our camper, we make lots of use of the classic old-time rest area. They’re a great place to stop for lunch, tea time, or supper, and if it’s remote enough, a discrete self-contained overnight stay. Now I get the bad news that they’re systematically being closed, victims of budget cuts and the ever-increasing commercial “travel centers” with drive-throughs, convenience stores, and such. CC reader Craig D. sent me a link to a website (ryannford.com) by someone documenting the old-school rest areas. His website is here. I’ll show just a couple more, but do check the rest out at his site.
Got any good rest-stop reminiscences?
The first one appears to be Point Magu, south of Ventura, CA.
It is on U.S. Hwy 70 overlooking White Sands Missile Range, NM. It is not so much a travelers’ rest area as a parking area for vehicles to wait during missile launches that temporarily close the highway. I believe that is a Nike Hercules surface-to-air missile on display.
The things college aged kids did here are probably best left unsaid… 😉
The PA Turnpike has always had “service centers,” which used to be stone buildings with sloped roofs (like old PA farmhouses) with Howard Johnson restaurants and adjoining gas stations (my recollections from the early 70s). But there were also numerous places along the road where the shoulder widened out for parking and there were picnic tables in the grass or under trees and trash containers set up if you wanted to stop for a bite of your own food. These are long gone, replaced in some spots for “emergency parking” only.
I realize that time marches on, with today’s heavier traffic, bigger tractor trailers, and higher travel speeds, so it would create more of a safety hazard with cars pulling willy-nilly off the side of the road, but still we’ve lost something in the process.
They’re still there, just not as many as there used to be. And for the ultimate in adventure, look up “Abandoned PA Turnpike”. 7 miles and 2 tunnels of bicycle-riding bliss. Make a day of it.
When we made a recent drive through “Breezewood” we though of stopping, but they have severely restricted access. Now pretty much accessible only by foot and none too easy.
What? It’s simplicity itself. They took out the Tannery Road bridge for maintenance purposes (i.e., they didn’t want to maintain it anymore), but the hill is marked and there’s a path to walk up. If you can ride a bike for the length of it you can easily walk up the hill with your bike. Otherwise, load Pumping Station Road into your GPS and park at the other end, which has a parking area and no hill.
One used to see these stops all over before the interstates were built.
On our way to the Wisconsin Dells in the mid-80s, we had to take a 50 mile or so ride on two-lane US 51 in Illinois before I-39 was built. Somewhere north of Bloomington there was a classic roadside picnic stop, and we used it for lunch on both vacation trips. It may still be there, but now that old 51 is now 251, and is a local road, now.
Travel on blue highways or two-lane roads as a main means has dwindled because the interstates make travel by car more convenient, if not mind-numbing at times.
Me? I always wanted to travel US 50 between Cincinnati and St. Louis, but it would take at least 8-9 hours I’m guessing, and 6-6½ hours via I-74 & I-70 is bad enough.
I highly recommend US 50 across Indiana, especially if you follow some of the old alignments. Sure it will take you time. But there’s so much to see. I drove it and documented it a few years ago.
http://jimgrey.net/Roads/US50Indiana/index.htm
IMO based on my multiple annual road trips….not so much being replaced as consolidated and limited to interstates. Texas used to have tons of these little ones, not more than a couple of picnic tables and a grill, most without bathrooms. And like most states they have consolidated to fewer larger places, with bathrooms, vending, information, play area. The bigger ones are the welcome centers. But just like they do in Illinois they have the midsized ones scattered around the major interstates. But your right its hard to find anything beyond that on secondary roads.
My father had an adversion to toll roads, so when we lived near Detroit in the ’50s and visited family in Chicago, we’d usually skip the Indiana Toll Road in favor of US 12. Michigan had a visitor center where the road went to Indiana (sw corner of MI) and we’d usually grab a picnic lunch there. Pleasant spot to stop for a break, especially with 3 boys in the car…
Oregon has a few, my favorite being one off the main highway just above Agency Lake, on Westside road. It’s shared between the county and the Forest Service, with the a gazebo in that log style common to depression-era WPA type facilities. Nice spot to stretch legs and take a leak.
As cars get faster and more reliable, and as chain businesses expand along major arteries, they’re just less necessary.
In remote parts of the Australian outback, sites similar to these are quite useful. It’s not really safe to drive at night there unless you have a truck with a bull bar (adding to the problem, the fuel stations are usually closed, anyway), and they provide a free place to camp in the rough. There are usually no services, so you do have to pack your own water. That could be quite fun, and a convenient way to get the occasional free night of accommodation.
Well, Illinois has Rest Areas up and down I-55 and 57, and no plans to close any.
Humans still have to answer nature’s call, and Rest Area is quicker to merge off and back on again. Also some have dog walk zones.
I’ve seen a few rest stops closed on I-5 in Oregon, but otoh I’ve seen quite a few on some of Nevada’s two-lane highways. They tend to be primitive of course, out in the desert with no water so they’re equipped with pit toilets, but they can still be a welcome sight.
Having been an OTR truck driver I know the biggest complaint was that there wasn’t enough stops along the interstate and larger state highways where a trucker could stop and sleep per federal law. Seems to me I remember reading that the Feds had given a few states some money to build and expand their stops. Probably gone now through the sequistrastion or some other BS.
BTW PC they’re not called “bull bars” in OZ. “Roo Bars” is the correct term to use.
Through a lot of the areas I’ve traveled out west they have been closing every other one. Many had been every 30 mi or so, many that have been closed were in good usuable condition.
The smaller ones are roo bars.
The larger ones are bull bars.
A roo bar will help with kangaroos, which do badly with cars. But it won’t substantial enough to protect your vehicle from hitting cattle, which do wander on the roads at night.
Yep Ive lived in those while travelling in OZ I pulled into a rest stop last night for a break but when your vehicle is 22metres long they can be awkward to park. And Bull bars is the term the theory being it will push the animal away from the car having hit a 4 foot Roo one night in a Holden panel van at 75mph orso the dead roo went underneath and came out under the left rear wheel, now sideways @ any speed doenst bother me but on two rh wheels yeah nah a quick hard right to slam the others back onto the ground then try to pull up and assess the damage it only stoved in the front panel HQs R tuff but decent bull bar can prevent that be warned though you need a solid car behind the bar not yer Japanese cars
Aren’t “roo bars” mandatory equipment in certain rest stops? 😉
Most of the roadside parks in my state (the ones on non-interstate routes) are being sold and/or closed due to their being higher maintenance and the other activities that tend to happen there, ie discarded needles and latex products.
The ones on the interstate are another story. All are money pits to various degrees, especially when they get a few years on them. That’s not to mention the prostitution activities, the mobile meth labs, being viewed as a dumping area for homicides, people expiring in their vehicles, the anonymous sexual encounters, dogs getting electrocuted from whizzing on the street lights – you name it. Then, toss in the people leaving ball games who are peeved about their team having lost and then you have anything imaginable getting flushed down the toilet.
That said, I do miss the roadside parks. Since I do not partake of any of those activities, it is a shame that a few knot-heads have ruined it for everyone else. My favorite one is this one in eastern Oregon. Quite memorable.
No whizzing on electric fencing….
+1
I grew up in rural northwest Pennsylvania in the forties and fifties on the edge of the Allegheny National Forest. Our small town was surrounded by beautiful Roadside Rest Parks both in the National Forest and along the roads bordering the Allegheny River. New facilities were opened throughout the fifties and even into the sixties. As the state began to need money for other things many of these facilities were closed as maintenance was expensive. My family would regularly use the parks for summertime picnic suppers. Many of my fond memories of those times cannot be repeated today. But of course there are still some fine places for picnics – just not the kind of rustic parks I recall. We also depended on similar parks across the USA during the summer of 1949 when we made a cross country trip to Los Angeles and back in our new Kaiser. We got up at 4:30 am every morning from whatever motel or tourist court we had stayed in and drove till around 7:30 when my parents would find a picnic table, break out the kerosene stove and cook bacon and eggs. Then it was back on the road till lunch time in a similar situation. By 4:30 in the afternoon the folks would have us checked into a motel for the night. I recall we left Pennsylvania at 4:30 am on a Monday morning and arrived in Sunland, CA at my uncle’s house on the following Saturday afternoon. The 49 Kaiser had no problem maintaining 90 miles per hour on western highways except for steep grades. The car never overheated and we passed by many GM and Ford products that were stopped to cool down on some mountain highways. We were carrying 3 adults and 2 children plus a full trunk of luggage. For air conditioning in the desert my dad bought dry ice and hung it in towels from the inside of the windows. It was very effective. He also installed a crude cruise control system of his own invention that would let him press a door bell button to wind up the gas pedal and then another button to unwind the cable and slow down. It saved him keeping his foot on the gas pedal and was also quite effective except for the abuse he had to take from my mom regarding the safety of his invention. I was only 12 when we got rid of the Kaiser so one thing on my bucket list is I would love to be able to drive a Kaiser sometime to see what my dad experienced with it.
In the ’60s, my dad & mom usually went with Holiday Inn or Ho Jo for our trips. Back then, these were consistently good and most were ‘nuthin fancy.
To my pre 10 year old self, they were palatial. Real showers instead of ye ole claw-foot tub… And every one had a SWIMMING POOL!!
After my dad died, I found some of his old Gulf card receipts. IIRC, those rooms were like $15 per night! Two adults and 3 kids, including a rollaway bed.
I expect on our 1949 California trip that motels or cabins were probably between $5 and$10 a night. I have no recollection of any restaurant meals on the trip so I think all our food was carried in the trunk of the car. I do not think any of the lodgings we used had pools although once we got to the western states I do remember one place we stayed that was two stories tall and built of logs. I was very impressed with that one, much better than the tourist cabins we usually had. I was only 5 years old at the time but I do remember many details of the trip.
chinookfan: thanks for your reminiscences; it was very vivid and reminded me of other road trip memories. That must have been quite a trip. Thanks for sharing….
The other great thing about that trip was that my dad took me to “Mac’s News” the day before we left and told me to buy as many comic books as I wanted to take on the trip. It was like winning the lottery! My father’s elderly Aunt Myrtle also accompanied us although she was somewhat in la la land a good bit of the time. It was a little like the famous movie “Vacation”.
Gee, my father never did that before our long road trips 🙁
But my brother had access to a large stash of MAD magazines; that probably explains a lot….
On a trip around the Gaspe Peninsula (eastern Quebec) a couple of years ago, I was pleasantly surprised to find rest stops all along route 132. Most rest stops are right on the shore of Gulf of St-Lawrence, offering spectacular views. Enjoyed many bucolic picnics along the way.
The Gaspe Peninsula is relatively remote and sparsely populated. The beautiful landscape, picturesque villages dotting the rugged coastline, and of course the rest stops, all reminded me of an earlier era, when road trips were an end unto themselves.
Now that’s a trip I’ve wanted to take for a very long time; must do!
This is the view from one of those rest stops. The two canoeists in the pic had miles of pristine coastline to themselves.
Gorgeous! Thanks.
I love it. You make me want to escape this barbaric heat we have out here in Georgia and go visit a more civilized part of the world.
There’s still some nice rest stops in Ontario. A favorite of mine is along the French River, off Highway 69 north of Parry Sound. We sometimes stop there for a break and a picnic on the way to the cottage. When we had our old Dodge Shadow it came in handy one summer when the A/C was dead. The French River is a little fast for swimming, but you can lay down on a rock and duck your head in the water for a quick cool-off.
Interstate 80 across PA still has rest stops, which I greatly appreciated. Not a lot of commercial stops on that stretch.
One issue I just learned about was whether there should be privately-operated rest stops leasing Fed. land alongside Interstates. Anyway, AZ DOT usually maintains theirs well (probably knowing how important tourism is for the state), whereas CA’s are not so good now, probably due to state budget problems. TX has many but unfortunately, they’re too close to the road if you want to sleep absent road noise.
Stops come in pretty handy for families with children of child-seat age.
There’s a reason why those places have disappeared – quite apart from budget cuts.
They’re often not safe. I don’t mean, as in you’ll get knifed and stuffed down a pit toilet (although that’s happened) but not safe as in, people loiter there – the kind of people you wouldn’t want your wife and daughter to meet. The kind of people who toe-tap, or stroke their trouser-flys in the doorway, or who tap out signals with their brake lights.
The Great State of Ohio had latrine-style rest stops for years and years, from the time the Interstate opened up. By the late 1980s, the governor of the time made a big show of bulldozing the last pit-toilet structure, in a show that we’d finally moved to the 20th Century. Only trouble was, all those beautiful buildings…running water…maps and phone kiosks…those COST. And they needed full-time custodial staff.
For every three or so of the primitive rest areas, there was one new modern one. And there is scarcely the money to maintain it. And there is still that clientele alluded to earlier. So…why NOT let Pilot or TA or Petro pick up some of the slack? If those aren’t much cleaner, or much more “orderly”…at least they’re controlled in their chaos and misbehavior.
Exactly my experience at a number of large and elaborate CA rest stops, about 20 years ago. Scary people aggressively following me around and asking where I am going, and can they get a ride. Muttering something about black helicopters and voices they are hearing. I always stopped at a Love’s or a Pilot after that.
I dont recall any of these in CA before the interstates. None of them to my knowledge have closed.
I remember dad pulling off US 99 (pre I-5) to rest in local town parks when he got tired. We never slept overnight at a rest stop.
Here in Maine a few still exist, but they are a rapidly being closed or repurposed. Mom, Dad and I used to visit them on an occasional Sunday for a picnic or a cookout. They used to be nice places until the riffraff started pillaging them (drugs, vandalism, partying, etc.). It is my understanding they became a liability for the State, so most of them were closed.
Nothing but Mc Donalds, gas station convienience stores, Subways, Domino`s Pizza, Cracker Barrels, and the ubiquitous Starbuck`s coffee emporiums literally everywhere.We had to get off the highway to find a diner, and in most cases the food was good. I never eat the ‘food’ any of these places sell.
Many of the popular rest stops and picnic areas, I recall as a kid in the late 70s in Southeastern Ontario remain, thankfully. They have always been popular with local residents, not just travellers, as picnic spots, or boat launches, etc. And if the rest stop is not on a major highway, the local municipalities/townships have often taken over their maintenance. Haven’t seen that many disappear in the past 40 years. The locals often cherish these spots, and are fine with taxes paying for their maintenance.
The business models for conservation areas have changed in this time. Where they used to rely heavily on provincial and local tax funding, there are conservation authorities now, that charge the public fees for visits. Where, conservation areas used to be free in the 70s and 80s.
The province has a website documenting all the rest stops in the province. With camera views, and listing available amenities.
https://511on.ca/list/restareas?start=0&length=25&order%5Bi%5D=1&order%5Bdir%5D=asc
The province also operates ‘ONRoute’ rest stops, on the major 400 series freeways. These are large stops, with numerous franchise restaurants, gas stations, retailers, charging stations, and other amenities.
https://www.onroute.ca/
The primary problem is those who make it bad / unsafe for passers through .
I too miss those halcyon dayze when pops would drive us long distances and we’d set up the camp stove on the picnic table to have breakfast lunch or dinner .
Indeed Az. had always had the nicest one and Ten. the worst .
-Nate
Another interesting aspect to these is the naming. Off the top of my head, I’ve seen Rest Area, Rest Stop, Wayside, Rest Park, Roadside Park, and my favorite, in Oklahoma, Roadside Table (if I remember it right).
Sadly, some of these highway amenities were shutdown when they were subverted into drug and prostitution markets (I-10 near Fontana, CA) or deemed too expensive to maintain (i-25 in Colorado). On the upside, I made extensive use of Texas’ rest stops while traveling for business, which were well maintained and offered WI-FI at least at the time when I was there.
Rest stops like this don’t have fond memories for me. As a kids riding cross country, it meant that we weren’t going to have A&W burgers or something fun. It meant that Mom made sandwiches that were warm, soda that was warm, and flies, wind and sun.
It is true that there were also fine rest stops we utilized too. New Mexico took good care of theirs. Colorado could always have a beautiful scene. Wyoming too. But Kansas? Not really. As a kid we were always excited to eat at a new place. Stopping at a rest area, meant that wasn’t going to happen that day.
Here in New England on the state highways in particular, we used to have pull-offs that offered nothing beyond a strip of parking separated from the main road. Sometimes there would be picnic tables and a trash can. If you were really lucky, there might be a roadside historical marker noting something famous that had happened near the spot. Pulling into these things for a break from driving was something I commonly recall from childhood roadtrips as well as long distance commutes along some of these roads in a younger adult life.
The problem apparently was the “somewhat separated from the main road” aspect of these, and gradually in the 1990s-early 2000s the public formed the idea that these spots served the interests of roadside undesirables doing undesirable things (I have my doubts that this was ever the plague of indecency it was thought to be, but whatever…); and the states started to close them down. The idea was that they’d be replaced by “modern” state-operated facilities with restrooms, information kiosks, vending machines, and human staffing.
Unfortunately, this also coincided with crashing state budgets fueled by tax-cutting measures…and many of the improved facilities did not get built, and some that did were closed down…thereby becoming very expensive versions of the same dens of iniquity they had been built to replace. Nowadays, many of these have been replaced yet again with the fast-food travel plazas Paul mentions in the article. Well, I guess being in the rest stop construction/renovation business is not a bad business to be in.
There are exceptions though. Vermont, in particular (go figure), has done an excellent job with its state-operated rest stops (aka “Welcome Centers”) along I-89. These state-operated facilities are beautiful buildings, each unique and designed to reflect some aspect of their location. Inside, there’s crafts-made furniture, information and history displays, and generally staff who can answer questions about local attractions and sites. My favorite is the Sharon Northbound center which includes a fascinating (to me) “Living Machine” wastewater recycling system. It’s worthy of a visit in and of itself!
https://informationcenter.vermont.gov/centers/sharon (check out the video on the Living Machine that’s linked from that site)
It also provides a basis for the very detailed signs in the restrooms cautioning you against drinking from the toilets.
I’ve yet to encounter an I-80 rest stop in Iowa that wasn’t immaculately maintained. The EB Grinnell stop is situated such that trucks park close to the interstate but car parking is a couple of blocks away, up a hill. Perfect for overnighting.
Nebraska too has well maintained stops on I-80 and plenty of them. WB ‘Brady’, just east of North Platte, has a similar siting as that Grinnell, IA stop and is also good for overnighting.
Maybe I’ve just been lucky, but I’ve never run into any unsavory characters at any IL, IA, NE, or CO rest area. Free wi-fi too.
I’d honestly never given much thought to rest areas prior to my initial move from Montana to Arizona in 2008. They’ve always just been there… a welcome sight when needed, with blue signs counting down the miles to them spaced along the freeway to make it easier to plan restroom breaks and 7th inning stretches. The things range from decent to seedy, with the bathrooms frequently smelling like a herd of animals stampeded through just before your arrival. The upside is that they are usually positioned so that you can get off the freeway, make a pit stop, then hop back on the road again more quickly and easily than with most truck stops and commercial travel plazas.
Back to 2008… I was on the last stretch of my 1500 mile trip from Montana, driving between Phoenix and Tucson late at night, fueled up on coffee and energy drinks. I had to stop and pee about every 30-40 miles by this point, and spotted the familiar “REST STOP xx Miles” sign, and when I got there, it was closed and had a gate preventing entry. so I hopped back in the car and had to find another place to pull off and water the weeds. The next rest area was also closed and barricaded. I was a bit miffed by this point, so I whizzed on the gate and drove away. Sure, the economic situation at that time and resultant budget cuts were responsible for these closures, but none of that changed travelers’ elimination requirements- and gas stations in rural areas can be quite far apart, making it difficult to plan around the lack of restrooms on certain legs of trips.
Fortunately, the closed rest areas reopened after a few years, but I do have a couple of memories from 2008~11 that stick with me… On another late night trip, I stopped to pee out of necessity, and a state trooper pulled off to check out what I was up to. I was pretty far off the main highway, but I left my car door open and the illuminated dome/courtesy lights caught his attention. He gave me some grief, but didn’t take it too far. Another was with my daytime job managing a residential group home: One of the clients needed a restroom available on short notice, and the distances between places with them available was just too great for us to adventure to some places with rest areas closed. And finally: On a night trip (a common theme with me is a tendency to prefer driving at night) with my then girlfriend… She had to use the bathroom in one of these dead areas with no restrooms. This led to a side journey to find a place where she could do so outdoors. It had to be far, far away from the potentially prying eyes of traffic, but somewhere where I could see her and protect her in case something bad happened, but couldn’t see her in the act of peeing. It was an inky, moonless night, and she was squicked out by the blackness, so we needed flashlights but the flashlights had to be turned off so I couldn’t see her but then she couldn’t see me and was scared so I had to hold her hand but then she needed her hand so I had to stand over the top of her… Awkward? Yep. Sorta.
I’ve had only one notably sketchy encounter at a rest area near Seattle, but it’s almost too far out to even be believable without quite a bit of essplanation, so it’ll have to wait for another time.
Rest stops. Yes, I’ve seen and stayed at more than a few over the decades. I don’t recall them at all in family trips in the 50’s, although it’s possible my Mom was too paranoid to let my Dad stop at them. In the 70’s on my own I spent the night in many, inside the car for the most part. Driving old VW bugs at the time I vividly recall the signs in the south about “do not change oil on pavement” which I did not and following the 3K oil change interval, did so on the gravel. Talk about another time…
Most of my travel in recent decades has been west of the Rockies, and while I don’t see many removed, here in my home state of California many are closed for remodeling for extended periods of time.
Only sketchy things I’ve seen have been in Calif on the outskirts of the SF Bay area, which made me somewhat uncomfortable, but not really threatened. Read between the lines, you’ll figure it out.
Gawd, how could I have missed it! I got started about the pic with the missiles and got sidetracked. But I’ve been there. Actually just after 9-11. No missiles in the air, but lots of F15s buzzing around. I mean right after, within the week. Ever been buzzed by an F15?
Once a month or so a couple of F-16s scream low and loud over my Denver house, Colorado Air National Guard training out of Buckley AFB.
That brought back memories! Late 60s, Vietnam, I was in the Navy Seabees running a D8 Cat at the end of a runway at a jet base. Got down off the dozer to pickup something when not one, but TWO F-4 Phantoms took off next to each other and they both hit full AB directly above me. Literally knocked me to the ground!
MIKE ASKED : ‘Ever been buzzed by an F15?’
Yes, if you go to the Trona Valley, sooner or later you’ll get buzzed by fighter jockeys out practicing .
I find it much more fun to be way on the side of the valley ~ when those damn jets thunder overhead so close you can count the rivets, that’s way too scary for this old man .
-Nate
In the Minneapolis metro we have a handful of these restored Beehive stoves. Built during the Works Progress Administration. Back when taking a long drive was a big deal and families would park right on the side of the interstate. Lol! Times sure have changed. From what I’ve seen and heard the public rest areas in MN are pretty nice and when you get into rural areas are maintained by local farmers and clean enough to eat off the floor. Only if you’re into that sort of thing.