WIGWAM MOTEL

Continuing with our travels along Route 66 featuring iconic motel signs.
The Glancy - Clinton OK
Blue Swallow Motel - Tucumcari NM

November 2008 - Rialto CA

The Wigwam Motels, also known as the "Wigwam Villages", is a motel chain in the United States built during the 1930s and 1940s. The rooms are built in the form of tipis, mistakenly referred to as wigwams.

A wigwam and a tipi, also spelled teepee, are two different dome-shaped dwellings used by Native Americans. They are different in construction, structure, materials used, technique used, and are used as dwellings by Native Americans of different regions.

 It originally had seven different locations: two locations in Kentucky and one each in Alabama, Florida, Arizona, Louisiana, and California.

They are very distinctive historic landmarks. Two of the three surviving motels are located on historic U.S. Route 66: in Holbrook (will post another week), Arizona, and on the city boundary between Rialto and San Bernardino, California. All three of the surviving motels are listed on theNational Register of Historic Places: the Wigwam Motel in Cave City, Kentucky, was listed in 1988 under the official designation of Wigwam Village #2; the Wigwam Motel in Holbrook, Arizona, was listed as Wigwam Village #6 in 2002; and the Wigwam Motel in Rialto/San Bernardino, California, was listed in 2012 as Wigwam Village #7.