Saving The World's First Motel

"In 1925, Pasadena-based architect and developer Arthur Heineman decided to create a 'motor hotel' hybrid between rustic auto camps and conventional hotels. But he found that the words 'motor hotel' didn't fit on his sign, so he scrunched them together. The Milestone Mo-Tel (later the Motel Inn), located in San Luis Obispo roughly halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, had little garages right next to several dozen bungalows that rented for $1.25 a night. The combination of easy access to rooms and to the highway, reasonable prices, privacy, even a little anonymity, caught on in the lodging industry."

Early motels had critics including Edgar J. Hoover who called them "a new home of disease, bribery, corruption, crookedness, rape, white slavery, thievery and murder." A 1935 study by Southern Methodist University stated: "The whole atmosphere is that of a rendezvous -- of a trysting place secrecy, furtiveness -- quick slipping in and swiftly stealing away."