Royal Motel Then and Now

2500 W Chestnut Street/Wyatt Earp Boulevard

It’s amazing how different the area between the Dodge House and Matt Down Lane appears now compared to when I was a child. The Aqua Slide was pretty far from our house but it was also amazing, so summers were spent there getting bruised to bits. If you know, you know! We had to pass the miniature golf place on the north side of Wyatt Earp to get there but also a few seedy motels. One such motel began as something much more appealing.

The West Side Camp appears to have gotten its start as the White Cottage Camp in the late 1920s. Like most tourist camps, it included a small grocery store and a filling station. The name change occurred sometime after the 1930 directory was printed.

Throughout the 1930s, the West Side Camp had several individual cottages for rent, and long-term agreements were welcomed. The housing situation in Dodge was just as tight then as it is now and people took whatever they could get.

While Henry Holbrook’s name was associated with the camp early on, Walter Stapleton ran it in the early 1940s.

The camp was purchased by Roy Evans in September of 1950 and renamed the Royal Motel.

After completing several upgrades, Evans sold the expanded Royal Motel to Roland Page in June of 1954.

Page increased local traffic by encouraging clubs and other groups to hold their meetings in the TV lounge.

His plan appears to have been successful and a permit was approved in March of 1955 to build a cafe at the motel.

Being in the construction business certainly helped Page move things along and the grand opening was held on May 2.

This undated postcard shows the entrance from Collar Avenue. You can see how the lot slopes down toward Chestnut/Wyatt Earp.

The motel was robbed in September of 1957 and a female guest was nearly taken hostage. Police arrested 19-year-old Bobby Ray Hicks of Kentucky, who was found with $300 of the $350 that was stolen from Mr. and Mrs. Rod Page. There was a police chase but the two accomplices got away after fleeing at speeds up to 120 miles per hour.

Stanley and Bessey Welsh bought the motel around 1959.

By the 1970s, the neon sign at the entrance had been replaced with a larger, more visible model.

Stanley Welsh died in December of 1978 and it appears Bessey sold the motel not long after. In the 1980s, the motel began a serious downward spiral. Newspaper reports included tons of 911 calls for assaults, burglaries, and slit tires. The most serious event was a deadly fire in December of 1980.

Dianna’s notification to her “friends” appears to be a thinly veiled ad for prostitution after her release from jail.

The motel was somehow still open in February of 1986 but not for much longer. It was vacant by 1990 and mostly demolished soon after. A building permit was issued for a $2.9 million hotel on the lot in 2009 but it never materialized. Property taxes haven’t been paid since 2018.

Here’s how it looked this summer:

I don’t have any insightful opinions about what Dodge needs or doesn’t need as far as development is concerned. Perhaps just a little less bindweed would be nice.

If you like what you see, be sure to subscribe (way at the bottom of the post on mobile devices) to receive an email each time a new post is published and share on social media. You can also support my work by donating below. This content is 100% funded by history fanatics such as yourself. Thanks for reading!

Some of you have requested additional donation options. If you would like to send a direct donation, you can now do so by clicking here.