![]() And we’re sure that, in 100 years or so, after man has colonized Mars and other planets, when Earthling-Martians or Earthling-Venusians decide to take whatever they call a road trip to visit ancient Earth’s roadside attractions in those times, they’ll likely choose to stay at the Best Western Space Age Lodge for the same reasons. When a faulty neon light caused a fire that destroyed the motel’s lobby and restaurant, the next day a banner was raised reading “Attacked by Aliens!” They even took the kitsch factor up a notch by adding a UFO-shaped roof to the lobby.Īnd, indeed, it’s that kitschiness mixed with a certain sense of nostalgia for moon landings, space races and wanting to be an astronaut that keeps the business going strong 58 years later. ![]() In fact, it actually embraced its now kitschy Space Age past. In trying to keep hip with the times, the four Anaheim motels adopted a “Miami Vice” theme, complete with neon lobbies and desktop computers on their front desks.įortunately, the Best Western Space Age Lodge in Gila Bend didn’t give in to 1980s peer pressure. By then, however, the Space Age had started to wane.īy the 1980s, new wave music, strange hairstyles, neon clothes and MTV (which, ironically enough, featured an astronaut known as “Moon Man” as its mascot/icon) were all the rage. America would do it at least six more times with American astronauts last departing the moon aboard Apollo 17 on December 19, 1972. Of course, July 20, 1969, man did land on the moon before the end of the decade as Kennedy promised seven years earlier. (Of course, it didn’t hurt that Stovall also owned a copper mine and a plastic factory from which he got his “jet age” materials.) Touted as a “new idea in SPACE-IOUS comfort” Stovall personally designed everything from the styrene lamps to space bubble room dividers in each motel using “jet age metals and plastics”. As a result, he designed and built five outer spaced-themed hotels: the Inn of Tomorrow, the Cosmic Inn, The Galaxy, the Space Age Lodge (all in Anaheim, California) and another Space Age Lodge in Gila Bend, Arizona. In the mid-1960s, Stovall seemed to think America wasn’t getting out into space fast enough so he decided to bring a little outer space down to Earth. Kennedy launched the Space Age in America and one man who was out of this world about outer space at the time was businessman and hotelier Al Stovall. Speaking those words at Rice University on September 12, 1962, President John F. Today, we’ll take a look at one of those over the Moon accommodations – the Best Western Space Age Lodge in Gila Bend, Arizona. Still, there was perhaps no one more inspired by outer space at the time than businessman and hotelier Al Stovall who became the original owner of five out-of-this-world motels that he designed and built in the mid-1960s. Ah, the Space Age – a time in America when every kid wanted to be an astronaut and every adult had their eyes on the Moon and beyond.
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