100th Meridian Motel Then and Now

2300 W Chestnut St / Wyatt Earp Blvd

This may come as a surprise but national trends sometimes take a minute to catch on in Dodge City. The transition from tourist or cabin camps to motels was no exception. Arthur Heineman coined the term “Mo-Tel” in 1925 but that term didn’t pop up in Dodge until after World War II when the Shangri-La Motel was built.

R. Roy and Leona Taylor built the 100th Meridian Court and Service Station in 1946. At that time, the location was half a mile west of town on the north side of Highway 50.

Like most tourist courts, the 100th Meridian consisted of a cluster of individual cabins.

The Taylors hopped on the motel bandwagon by 1948 and the 100th Meridian Motel was officially born.

This postcard, printed with the wrong street number, shows the motel office with the service station to the right.

The next postcard was printed with the correct street number and shows the first in a series of additions as well as the five flags, which the Taylors had installed at the front of the property.

As cleanliness in accommodations became the norm, motels moved away from the white motif and toward the blonde mid-century modern brick.

Around 1962, the Taylors sold the property to John and Betty Koepke and it was renamed Thunderbird Motel by 1963.

By 1967, Ben Jr. and Dorothy Clark operated the Thunderbird and the famous swimming pool was quite the attraction.

Once upon a time, local motels allowed people to pay a small fee to swim. The Thunderbird was the best of those, mainly because the pool was so large, but also because we didn’t get in trouble for doing cannonballs.

This is the Thunderbird Motel I remember with the colorful barrier around the pool.

I somehow never heard about the murder which took place in the basement under the office building in March of 1992. At that time, the Thunderbird was managed by Roger Sr. and Kelly Taubr, aka Jones. Roger apparently beat and strangled employee Patrick “Buddy” Howe to death in that basement because Howe wanted to move to Oklahoma or Texas to be near family. Howe’s body was found in a culvert near the Ford/Gray County line.

A warrant was issued in 1996 but the couple fled and were finally arrested in Monroe County, Georgia in the Spring of 2015 after working in several states under numerous aliases.

Although the Thunderbird Motel continues to operate in the location of the former 100th Meridian Court, the pool we enjoyed so much was filled in ages ago. The glorious neon sign has been restored and is extremely popular with roadside photographers.

These photos were taken in June of 2023:

I seriously considered including a nighttime photograph of the illuminated sign but have never been able to do it justice. The next time you’re out and about after dark, drive by and see it for yourself. Functional neon signs are going the way of the tourist court.

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