Once Edgar and Allan find out Roderick Usher has ended up at the Gale Farm and OZitorium, they convince Aunt Judith and Uncle Jack to take them on a road trip to get back their cat. There are a lot of miles to cover between Baltimore and Kansas, but there is certainly no shortage of quirky roadside attractions and motels to keep the twins entertained along the way! Apparently, Edgar and Allan share their parents’ “sense of humor” (107). When they were alive, Mal and Irma Poe loved taking “crazy vacations” all over the country to see things like the “toy-robot museum,” the “world’s largest ball of human hair,” “The World’s Largest Catsup Bottle,” and “The Pencil Sharpener Museum” (106, 148). According to Aunt Judith, “They’d send . . . postcards. And they’d buy T-shirts and give them away as joke gifts” (106). For many of us, motels and roadside attractions are an all-too-common sight, but did you ever stop to think about how and why they became such a defining feature of the American cultural landscape?
- Learn how the growing popularity of automobiles in the wake of the Great Depression led to the widespread construction of highways lined with drive-in restaurants, motels, and roadside attractions to draw tourists and revenue to small towns across America. How did the recovering American economy make vacationing via car more appealing and accessible to everyday Americans?
- Trace the development of roadside accommodations from campgrounds to motor courts to motels. Why do you think it was so important for road-tripping tourists to sleep in close proximity to their parked cars?
- Consider how construction of the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System ended up diverting tourists onto superhighways and away from once-popular roadside attractions and motels. How do you think this change affected the communities that had once thrived on the tourist traffic along the smaller state highways? If you have seen the Pixar film Cars, which is set in a fictional town along Route 66, that may give you a hint!
- Many motels and roadside attractions still survive today because tourists, like the Poes, are willing to go out of their way to find them. Take a closer look at a few of America’s quirkiest stops here and here.
Are you feeling inspired to take a road trip? If so, get your family together and use this interactive map to find a unique roadside destination near you!