Whiting Brothers Gas Station & Motel

The motel had it's own building on the east end of the property, the station cafe and grocery were west of the motel. Those three were built around an older cafe called the Chief's Rancho Café which was mentioned in Jack Rittenhouse's 1946 A Guide Book to Highway 66. Part of the station was still standing in 2017, but in pretty rough condition.

The Whiting Brothers Motel and Groceries sign has somehow managed to remain standing all these years across the road from where the buildings were.

I'm guessing that the signs across the road from the motel and station were built to get better visibility after I-40 opened.

What's left of the the station is hiding behind the green stuff in this photo. That's the sign protruding towards the road from the top of the station canopy.

The Whiting Bros. sign had fallen over by the time I snapped this photo in 2015, but you could still read it from underneath. I blurred out the graffiti on the wall inside the station because I wanted to show both the condition and how small the space was.

All that's left of the motel is a concrete slab. Apparently the vacant motel building became home to vagrants, so it was demolished.

The words "WHITING BROTHERS" and "MOTEL" were lit in neon but the Groceries sign and the WB emblem were just backlit. The big red arrow was lit with about 275 incandescent bulbs on each side. Doesn't that make you wish you could climb up there and change a few dozen in the cold of winter or the heat of summer?

This part of Route 66 was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.

Photo(s): 2012, 2015