ARIZONA

Wigwam Motel: Family keeps Route 66 nostalgia alive

Three generations of a family keep the lights on for those seeking a taste of Americana.

Scott Craven
The Republic | azcentral.com
The Wigwam Motel in Holbrook attracts travelers looking to experience the nostalgia of Historic Route 66. It opened in 1950.

HOLBROOK — On a shady bench along a busy highway, a spot designed for watching the world go by, 12-year-old Clifton Lewis did just that.

An endless parade of Detroit steel rumbled along Route 66, in the midst of its heyday in 1950. Sedans and coupes roared by, powered by V8s and fueled by dreams.

Lewis noted the Fords, the Kaisers, the DeSotos, many of them slowing ever so slightly to take in the sight that loomed behind him.

One day, he believed, he too would ride Route 66 to his future. And those concrete tepees everybody stared at — the ones that shaped his life — would fade in his rear-view mirror, joining the landscape of motels and gas stations marking the road from here to there.

But the boy wouldn't know for years that "here" was his "there."

'Have you slept in a wigwam lately?'

The tepees at the Wigwam Motel in Holbrook are a nostalgic sight along Historic Route 66.

Each morning Clifton Lewis, now 78,  can peek out the window of the apartment he shares with his wife and look upon the 15 concrete tepees that have comprised so much of his life, and that of the Lewis family.

Only those who dare venture a few miles off Interstate 40 will find the Wigwam Motel, where the sign asks not rhetorically at all, "Have you slept in a wigwam lately?"

When his father Chester Lewis opened the motel in 1950, it occupied a prime slice of real estate along America's busiest and most popular cross-country highway — Route 66, the Mother Road. The stretch from Chicago to Los Angeles was filled with those seeking everything from cheap thrills to the American Dream.

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Today, classic cars parked in front of each tepee are intended to conjure those days, but time has taken its toll on those vehicles as well. With paint fading as quickly as memories, their glory days have long since passed.

So, too, with this stretch of Route 66 through Holbrook. It's now Hopi Drive, a quiet street noted as much for the Wigwam Motel as for the modern Safeway across the street.

Still, Lewis's pride in the place shines as brightly as when he was pumping gas, even if the then-teenager never would have admitted it.

And he cherishes the small museum tucked behind the office where his share of his father's precious petrified-wood collection is on display. Each visit brings back memories of the many times he and his siblings accompanied his father into the desert looking for only the best specimens.

On a recent tour, Lewis shared one secret to a successful hunt.

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"You have to get the wood wet to bring out its color," he said, leaning against a glass case filled with polished finds that shone like gems. "Dad would pick one up off the ground and give it a lick. He'd also take the ones we found and do the same thing. If it was good, he kept it for himself."

Lewis no longer puts in the hours around the motel that he used to. Still willing to fix what needs fixing and tend to what needs tending, he leaves the day-to-day operation to others.

The 78-year-old pitches in on various repairs (the heaters can be particularly troublesome) and occasionally he'll take one of the classic cars for a spin, calling for help should the motor die.

In winter, more people stop for photos than rooms, though there is enough business to keep the doors open. In summer the Wigwam is often booked full with travelers who have not slept in a wigwam lately, drawn by nostalgia rather than amenities. It's like finding a living dinosaur in a fossil bed.

And if not for the Lewis family — and particular members of the Lewis family — the Wigwam would be as fossilized as the petrified wood scattered across the landscape.

That story, the real story, began 70 years ago.

Building the business: Each kid a job

The Wigwam Motel in Holbrook has been lovingly restored and is run by the family of Chester Lewis, the original family.

Chester Lewis had done very well in real estate when, in the 1940s while on a Mormon mission in Kentucky, he stumbled across a motel that captured his imagination.

Lewis had already built hotels in Kingman and the El Rancho in Holbrook, but he'd never seen anything like the concrete tepees sprouting along a highway in Cave City.

The sign said Wigwam Village, despite the distinct lack of domed shelters typically built of branches, fronds or hides. (Lewis eventually learned that the builder didn't like the way "Tepee Village" sounded and sacrificed accuracy for phrasing.)

Lewis met with owner Frank Redford and wondered if a partnership might be possible. Redford was happier to see his idea spread rather than to profit from it, so he allowed Lewis to replicate the design on one condition: that he be paid by the dime.

Lewis installed radios in each room that charged 10 cents per half hour, then split the revenues 50-50 with Redford. For years, Clifton Lewis said, he and his siblings dutifully collected those dimes from each room, counted them and reported the tally to their father, who would send Redford the agreed-upon proceeds.

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The 15 tepees rose slowly in the high desert, Lewis working alongside his sons. The structures were arranged in an open rectangle, matching Lewis's perception of an Indian village.

In front, a tepee twice the size of the others served as the office, flanked by two smaller tepees serving as restrooms. A few years later, the large tepee was demolished to make room for a rather plain, but more functional, building that stands today.

Wigwam Motel opened in May 1950 as a motel, gas station and roadside attraction, a Route 66 trifecta.

In those first few months, however, the Lewis family watched helplessly as motorists drove right past the "Vacancy" sign. (The word "No" was not even on the sign as Chester Lewis thought it impolite to tell passing strangers you had no room for them.)

The Wigwam struggled in its first months, Clifton Lewis recalled, largely because of an overabundance of hotel rooms nearby, many of them with unusual themes.

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"There was this seashell motel just down the way with twice as many rooms," Lewis said. "People didn't like that we had small windows and bare concrete floors. They could get a nicer room at the same price."

Business slowly picked up until vacancies were the exception, especially during the summer. When California students started summer break, it was like a dam bursting, causing a flood of travelers washing along Route 66.

Each Lewis sibling had a job, whether it was cleaning rooms, laundering sheets, pumping gas or signing in guests. Clifton Lewis often roamed the parking lot taking down license plates, the only way to track those who left without paying. (Very few ever did.)

The Wigwam's popularity convinced Lewis that the motel was not only his legacy, but the family's as well. The patriarch built a two-story apartment building behind the motel, its units destined to shelter the future generations who would operate the business.

But the future, and its generations, had different ideas.

What the world had in store for him

Clifton Lewis had no intentions of returning to Holbrook, or the family business, when he left for Brigham Young University at the age of 18. As far as he was concerned, he'd pumped his last tank of Texaco Fire Chief.

That went against what it meant to be a Lewis in Holbrook. Your life's story included the second and third acts unfolding at the Wigwam. The motel was more than a family business. It was a legacy.

But tales written in his childhood pointed Clifton Lewis in a different direction. Life divided itself evenly between school and the motel, backdrops that became monotonous. Breaks occurred when he accompanied his father on rare fishing trips, memories that burst with color even today. But once they were back at the motel, his dad returned to being all business.

Clifton turned 18 in 1956, when post-war America's future was as bright as the neon signs along the Mother Road. He was ready to see what the world had in store for him. He married, taught high school in Oregon and New Mexico and earned a master's degree and Ph.D.

By 1974, he was in his fourth year of teaching Spanish at the College of Santa Fe when he received a call, and a plea, from the past.

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Route 66 was on its last legs as large swaths of Interstate 40 opened across northern Arizona. Motorists preferred the destination to the journey, and I-40 was the straightest line between two points.

As with other businesses along Route 66, the Wigwam Motel struggled and Lewis's father was ready to pull the plug. But first, his dad asked him to return. The time of the tepees was over, his father believed, but the land still held possibilities, not the least of which was a museum devoted to the family's collection of petrified wood.

Lewis's siblings were firmly rooted in places far from Holbrook, leaving his father few choices when it came to finding a successor. The Spanish professor looked deep within, and was surprised to find pride in the family business still part of his DNA.

Not long after he returned in 1974, Lewis realized the treasure was not the land or the museum. It was the motel, which held memories for his family and nostalgia for the guests.

He and his wife settled in and started a family. Lewis taught Spanish part-time at Northland Pioneer College in Show Low, an adjunct professor who pumped gas when he wasn't delivering lessons. For the second time in his life, Lewis split his time between school and the Wigwam.

Lelia Demuth stokes the fire in the office at the Wigwam Motel in Holbrook.

It turned out to be too little, too late. A few years later, Lewis's father decided it was time to close the motel.

"He just turned off the water and walked away," Lewis said. "He said he was tired of putting the wigwams to sleep."

The gas station remained open for a few more years, but it too was no match for I-40. It closed for good in 1980. A year later, Lewis accepted a full-time position at the college.

Over the next five years the motel faded, weeds sprouting through the hardpan. Lewis watched its slow decay.

"It was in real bad shape," he said. "But that was my father's choice. He was done."

In the months after his father died in 1986, Lewis heard from his brother John and his sister Elinor. They, too, were pained by the state of their childhood home.

It wasn't right, they agreed. Nor would they allow it to happen further.

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Pooling the necessary funds, the three financed an extensive renovation, done as a tribute to the late Chester Lewis.

As the only sibling in Holbrook, Clifton agreed to run the motel, soon putting his brood to work.

And just like his father, Lewis eyed his growing children with curiosity, wondering who among them would take over the Wigwam Motel and uphold family tradition.

He would finally understand how his father felt so many years ago when his children left one by one, ready to see what the world had in store for them.

'A place you thought you'd left behind'

A tepee is reflected in the parking lot of the Wigwam Motel in Holbrook.

The Baby Boomer-fueled nostalgia of the 1990s and early 2000s was kind to Route 66 and the Wigwam Motel. Vacationers eagerly turned off the interstate to seek remnants of a highway quickly vanishing.

The tepees stood as a beacon of simpler times. Most, if not all, were filled on summer nights by adults swimming in memories as kids complained about the lack of a pool.

The sameness was comforting, from the motel down to the people caring for it. The Wigwam remained a mom-and-pop operation, just as when it opened.

That meant if you were a Lewis, your birth was also a job interview, duties to be assigned on an age-appropriate basis.

When the motel reopened in 1987, Karina Lewis Pack joined her siblings in the climb up the career ladder from sweeping to dusting to laundry and beyond. The Wigwam imparted life and business lessons you couldn't get in a classroom.

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Still, when she graduated from high school, she put the Wigwam in the rear-view mirror, ready to see what the world had in store for her.

She earned a degree in agribusiness at Arizona State University and married her childhood sweetheart, who was a pre-med student on his way to becoming an emergency-room doctor.

They started a family, welcoming six children over 12 years. His job took them to Kalamazoo, Mich., before they settled in Klamath Falls, Ore. Life wasn't perfect, but it was pretty close.

Two years ago she received a call, and a plea, from the past.

Karina Lewis Pack talks with her dad Clifton Lewis in the Wigwam Motel office in Holbrook. The Lewis family has owned and operated the motel for three generations.

She listened to her father talk about retirement, how the Wigwam needed more energy than his 76-year-old body could muster.

Pack spoke with her husband about returning to Arizona. Yes, they'd established a good life in Klamath Falls, but their parents — all in Holbrook — weren't going to be around forever.

And then there was the motel. It didn't seem right for it to be in hands not belonging to a Lewis.

In the summer of 2015, the Pack clan returned to its roots — mostly to be closer to their parents, where their kids could get to know their grandparents.

But also for the Wigwam. It pulled at Karina, given its role in the Lewis family. And she did not want to disappoint her father, who'd devoted so much of his life to it. But it was an adjustment.

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"I don't want to say I was depressed, but it was overwhelming," Pack said, pausing. "Coming back to a place you thought you'd left behind."

Her husband found a job at hospitals in Show Low and Winslow and the family settled in Holbrook just minutes away from the Wigwam.

Pack has put most of her six children to work, with the exception of her 2-year-old. Her 5-year-old son is on light duty, charged with looking under beds, since his stature puts him closest to the ground.

Her father, now retired for more than a decade after 37 years at Northland Pioneer College, makes himself available for various chores, allowing Pack to pick up pointers from the master. He's taught her which tepees have the most reliable heaters, what to do when an AC unit suddenly quits, and where water is headed when a monsoon storm sweeps through.

Most importantly, Pack knows she can handle the motel once her father is done with putting the wigwams to bed.

'We'd come too far to let it go'

The Wigwam Village #6 opened in Holbrook in 1950 as a motel, gas station and roadside attraction, a Route 66 trifecta.

While there were some tough times during the Great Recession, business is nearly as good as when Route 66 tied America together.

The motel is full most summer nights, thanks largely to an older crowd seeking a romantic version of the 1950s. Millennials visit for the kitsch, and a younger generation wants to see the inspiration for the Cozy Cone Motel, inhabitable traffic pylons in the Pixar movie "Cars."

Winters are slower, though Pack said she'll fill half the units on weekends. And throughout the year, people stop by day and night to take photos of the lodging oddity.

Business, she said, is good enough to get by. The family plans to stay awhile. Pack and her husband are building a home within a few miles of the Wigwam, a perfect spot to put down roots.

"I don't want to say I'm doing this for my father," Pack said. "Every child wants to work hard to please their parents. But he's worked hard, built it up. His father did the same for him. We'd come too far to let it go."

At 35 years old, she's not too concerned about finding a successor. But the thought has crossed her mind, as it did with her father and his father before him.

When she wondered aloud who of her six children might be the next in line, 8-year-old Everett looked up from his video game.

"It's not going to be me," he said, returning to his phone.

"That's exactly what I thought," Pack said, not even missing a beat.

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