Rest Stops, R.I.P.
- Posted by: Emily Badger
- on June 15, 2009 at 9:08 am
For decades, states have defined themselves through their charming roadside rest stops. Now, they’re losing ground to supersized highway chains. GOOD visits a few of them to figure out what went wrong.
Megan Svajda, a lobbyist for the Virginia Hospitality and Travel Association, is sitting in a smart pantsuit and heels at a shaded picnic table off mile marker 107 on Interstate 95, just north of Richmond. Carloads of vacationing families funnel in and out of the single-story redbrick bathroom behind her. A Greyhound bus pulls up and dumps another two-dozen people into the parking lot and onto the well-tended lawn.
Svajda is here today, off a stretch of otherwise monotonous mega-highway, to show me a rest area she’s been fighting for since the Virginia Department of Transportation began threatening to shut it down earlier this year. “The argument has been made that ‘they’re just toilets,’” she says. “But as you can see, people are walking dogs, eating lunch, stretching their legs, picking up brochures. It’s not just a toilet.”
Next month, VDOT plans to close this stop and at least 18 of the 40 others in the state, which together serve about 45 million bathroom-breaking travelers a year. Today, there are more than 30 cars in the parking lot and a couple of 18-wheelers out back. When the rest stop is closed, the toilets will be ripped out, the plumbing drained and the electricity cut off. The doors and windows will be boarded up, and the main building surrounded in barbed wire. The off-ramp from the interstate will be barricaded with large concrete boulders. Then the place will just sit here, the weeds overgrowing around a relic of the interstate highway system between Richmond and Washington, D.C.
Across the country, rest areas like this one have been losing a long-fought battle to commercial alternatives, super-sized stops with eight blends of caffeine, free wifi, burgers, and gas. Traditional rest areas cost money to staff and maintain, and aside from the odd vending machine, don’t generate any direct revenue; Virginia expects to save $9 million (much of which has gone to minority- and female-owned maintenance contractors) by not maintaining these buildings. It’s a public expense, originally conceived when the highway system was new and the opportunities to stop far between. That’s harder to justify now that there’s a McDonalds and a gas station at every interchange. The flailing economy today has only made matters worse.
Last year, Louisiana closed 24 of its 34 stops, and Vermont has already shuttered four this year. In April, Wisconsin stopped staffing its welcome centers. South Carolina, meanwhile, is closing its stops two days a week (“budget cuts” say the signs on locked doors) and North Carolina one day a week (“budget shortfalls”).
Svajda argues that what’s at stake is not just your ability to hit the bathroom, but a state’s opportunity to make an impression on travelers—to give you the pitch about how Virginia is for Lovers, say. Or about how 400 years ago 103 men and boys crossed the Atlantic in three ships to found English-speaking America here. About how in Virginia, you can explore mountains and rivers and Civil War battlefields, including several just a short drive from this very spot.
A rest area is the only shot locals have to telegraph regional personality to millions of cars just passing through, and it’s been this way for nearly 50 years. The result has been an Americana road tour more revealing than any diner-hopping trip down Route 66: Whatever weird trivia you wanted to know about the geology of Montana, or the plantation history of Mississippi, you can learn at an interstate rest area. They have been a kind of toilet-as-ambassador.
The interstate system was created in 1956 as the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, and everything about it is perfectly uniform and federally mandated, right down to the width of the dotted white line. Rest areas, however, have been the holdout of states’ rights, most of them designed in a way that’s consistent throughout a state and different from those in the commonwealth next door. Codified in federal jargon as “safety rest areas,” they grew out of the fear that as millions of us took to the road cross-country for the first time, we’d need regular resting outposts to keep us from barreling into each other.
When you’re driving across the Great Plains, the view out the window doesn’t change for days, but at least the architecture of the rest areas does. In Wyoming, where the bathrooms run on solar power, there is a 12-and-a-half-foot bronze bust of Abraham Lincoln at a rest area off I-80. You can visit Vermont’s Vietnam Veterans war memorial at a rest area off I-89, or read about the Oregon Trail crossing I-84 over the Rockies, or the Battle of Bentonville (4,243 wounded, missing, or killed) off I-95 in the North Carolina piedmont. As travelers, we’ve come to judge entire regions of the country—and the people we have never met who live there—on the character and style of their pit stops.
This has always been part of the premise: What the interstate system cost us through efficiency—bypassing Main Streets and unique landscapes in the name of speed—rest areas have tried to give back: a sense of place.
“Part of what you’ve just described is partly due to Jack Kerouac,” says Doug Hecox, a public affairs officer with the Federal Highway Administration. “He takes off on his motorcycle, and one of the conclusions he draws in the book is that America is losing its identity. You can travel on the Interstate from one coast to the other and never see America. It’s all this bleak, anonymous kind of stuff. There are a lot of folks in the engineering community, the highway community, who are not blind to that.”
And so they gave us teepee picnic shelters in Oklahoma, and oil rig motifs in Texas, and Spanish pueblo bathrooms in New Mexico. In the 1960s and 1970s, when many rest areas were first constructed, that kind of kitsch played to the preconceived romance of different regions. Today, we are a country of long-distance drivers, but the kitsch is no less evocative.
“My memory of rest areas as a kid was that we always stopped at this one midway through our trip near a volcano, Mount Shasta,” says Joanna Dowling, an historian who lives outside of Chicago. This stop was on I-5 in California. “Our mom always read us the information about the volcano, and that was my link. I thought, ‘Oh, I remember that.’ You look forward to it.”
Dowling grew up to write her master’s thesis at the Art Institute of Chicago on the mid-century architecture embodied in rest areas. “Tell people you’re writing your masters thesis on rest areas,” she jokes, “and they sort of politely have no idea what to say to you.”
Dowling now has the odd job of advocating for the preservation of buildings that interest more people for their functional use than their historic significance.
“The point is more than just architectural grandeur, or ‘George Washington slept here.’ Those more mainstream understandings [of historic preservation],” she says. “This is a record of the culture of our transportation history, how the interstate system changed the whole dynamic of our country dramatically.”
If the interstate system is the embodiment of America’s post-World War II movement toward progress, then the rest areas are, as Dowling puts it, the physical manifestation of it.
“Rest stops are a record of the culture of our transportation history, of how the Interstate system changed the whole dynamic of our country dramatically.”
The Bracey welcome center in Virginia on I-85, about a two-hour drive from the rest area Svajda was touring, is a massive dual-winged colonial building. There is a Virginia flag out front and a white turret on top that might have been used in another era by a Revolutionary on look-out. It is one of the first things drivers see in Virginia after crossing over the border from North Carolina.
“A lot of people think it’s Williamsburg,” says Gloria Rhodes, who staffs the brochure-and-map desk inside. And now if you weren’t already planning to go there, maybe you will. It’s just 115 miles away.
There’s something immensely gratifying about crossing the line into a new state and being immediately confronted by evidence that this place is culturally unique. This rest area, like all of Virginia’s just-over-the-border welcome centers, isn’t on the list to be cut, but the budget shortfalls show in other ways. The staff is only recently back to working seven days a week. Maintenance is also no longer mowing the pet-walking lawn as often.
“And now it’s getting all snakey,” Rhodes says, by which she literally means there are now snakes in the grass.
She seems to understand, as welcome center employees intuitively do, that sometimes we don’t need directions to anywhere, we don’t even need to go to the bathroom; what we need is an excuse to get out of our cars, to talk to another person for the first time in hours about snakes or snow storms or the relative merits of regional rest area architecture.
Rhodes is acutely aware that every detail of this place speaks in some way for the entire state of Virginia.
“That’s why it hurts us so to see the grass growing up. It makes us look—” she pauses for several seconds searching for the right words. “Not manicured. You know how, when your yard is manicured, you look like you have pride in it?”
All photos: Joanna Dowling / Restareahistory.org
DISCUSSION: 499 Comments
My family….we had three kids…..traveled a lot over the past twenty years. I homeschooled my kids, so we were able to hit the road often. We counted on the rest areas. In fact, the kids would bring skates or jump ropes and burn off the energy, in order to endure some more car time. I really do think it is horrific to lose them! The traffic fatalities will go wayyyy up. The poor kids will get yelled at by their parents (the cheap ones, who don’t want to stop at Wendy’s to pee). But, worse of all, the pets will suffer. They can’t go into Mickey Deeze!!!Sad. What a shame!
When my family and i travel i always look forward to seeing what the next rest stop will be like just to see how different each state is in terms of architecture and the plants growing. And talk about contributing to consumerism society by replacing the rest stops surrounded by trees, with rest stops feeding into the fast pace lives we live when this is for many people a time to get away from all of fast pace living. Really aggravating.
As a kid, we crossed Nebraska on I-80 several times a year. That’s a lot of flat. I used to love interstate travel. Nebraska has (had?) nice rest stops: playgrounds, shade, something to read and learn. I always felt sorry for South Dakota and Iowa, their rest stops were cheap and shoddy in comparison. To a nine or ten year old, that translated to “the whole state is cheap and shoddy.” In my 20s I spent a lot of time driving across the Dakotas, Wyoming, and Montana. After four hours going 75mph in a straight line, you appreciate the rest stop. You stop. And then you rest. Seems almost quaint now, huh?I understand all the economics here, and with a little effort you can “rest” at the McDonald’s, but still.
It’s hard to imagine that rest areas are going away. My mom and her organization give free coffee and cookies at rest areas on I-5 in Washington. The organization gets donations and people get to stretch their legs and get a little bit of local culture/hospitality in the process. There still is demand for signing up to host the free coffee/cookies as it is a great fundraiser for organizations. Sigh. It’s a side sign of the times.
I have been given free rest area cookies in Washington State before and remember thinking it said a lot about the hospitality of the area. Thanks to your mom! On another note, I was at a rest area in North Carolina over the weekend (actually on U.S. 19, not an Interstate) after we finished working on this story and came across an exhibit I wish I could have mentioned… about the Trail of Tears. Thought it was pretty cool that this rest area had an honest retelling of a not-so-proud moment in local history. It’s a strange feeling to be standing (and going to the bathroom) on the spot where hundreds of Native Americans were once rounded up and deported to the West.
Prior to the current economic crisis, rest stops were getting closed due to the problems of prostitution and truck hawks (local male residents seeking random encounters with truck drivers on interstate corridors). Crime at rest areas seemed to be on the way down though, after a number of bad incidents in the 90’s, Florida and some other southern states put in night time security…
Rest areas are not a convenience, but a necessity. Special interests would like to have you get off interstates and use their mini-marts, with 1 or 2 bathrooms, questionable sanitation and safety. hhttp://www.openvtrestareas@blogspot.com
There have been many times that I’ve depended on a rest area as a place to stop and sleep! Getting rid of them would be BAD.
Also, in my experience Mississippi has the cleanest rest rooms!
Virginia has some of the most dangerous rest areas in the country. Often very underpatrolled, they have been the scene of numerous murders over the years and truck hawk activity runs rampant at some of the facilities — to the point where car and truck facilities have had to have been separated to different locations.
I miss the Top of Iowa rest area with its welcome center inside a barn and corn silo.
this is fabulous i love rest stops
This is so upsetting.. Rest stops are there for everyone to stretch their legs so they don’t fall asleep when driving long trips… It’s for our dogs to run around in the greenery.. It’s so that we can have a picnic in the middle of a road trip with friends and not have to eat the crap they serve at mcdonalds just because it’s cheap and fast… Rest stops are the fun places we stopped as children to get out of the car and get some fresh air.. To run around and get some energy out! Even though their is usually a building at a rest stop there is still nature at a lot of these. A place to sit in the grass under the shade of a tree. America is paving paradise to put up a parking lot for whats next. If there aren’t trees there isn’t oxigyn. If there aren’t tree’s it’s quite boring. Don’t we all have childhood memories walking through a forest or camping under tree’s… Hiking up a mountain… These are the most beauitful times I can remember — and on the way to these times I had a rest stop to sit with my best friend and listen to beethoven underneath the shade of a tree in the softest grass ever. I’m very sad to hear they are doing this.
Whenever my girlfriend and I go on road-trips she always wants to stop at rest areas. It used to drive me insane.
Rest areas are a necessity and should not be closed unless remodeling/updating. Located at 30 minute intervals and placed in unique and scenic locations they can be attractive and very useful. When missing, fast food and other locations expect you to buy stuff and often lock up the restrooms with signs “For Customers Only.” Where is the lawn or walkway areas (shaded in summer) and the clean restrooms? Tourist Brochures? Like standing in line for a key or even handling the key (how many people handled them without washing before you)? Like the frown coming from behind the counter ’cause all you need is the restroom? How about taking your family into a truck stop as your wife and daughters walk to the restrooms past the men “reading” porno magazines and staring at them? I’ve seen this walking behind them many times when there have been no convenient rest stops. PLEASE, rebuild/update/construct new ones at 30 minute intervals. As a tourist traveling to your state we look for and expect these with clean restrooms, a place to walk, and information on kiosks as to what to see in the area and some of its history. PLEASE, DO NOT ELIMINATE CLEAN & ATRACTIVE REST AREAS.
I understand the rationale for closing, but this is indeed a sad day, as was the day we lost our drive-in movies. We’re becoming a less social people and it will take its toll and have its ramifications. How long will it be before the McD’s at the next stop says restrooms are “for customers only?” What about our dogs who travel with us? Though I realize government has to be a “business” of sorts, does everything have to be about the money? How about offering a service, funded by taxes, for no pecuniary gain. I’d much rather see rest areas than decorative overpasses.
I feel there are many people concerned with this initiative to close rest stops. I agree with all that they are priceless when travelling with children and when drivers get tired to take a break. I work in Central New Jersey and used to stop at the Morristown rest stop on I 287 to nap for 30 minutes when going home since I have a 1 hour ride. Now I drive with one eye open and one eye closed since they shut it down.
What can the average citizen do to make a difference in not letting this happen?
Praise Meldrim that New Hampshire has placed N.H. State Liquor Stores at many of its Rest Areas. Keeps them open and offers booze for sale, even on the Sabbath!
What I love about rest stops is their complete lack of commercialism (excepting the occasional junk food machine). After a few hours of redundant cement and billboard assault, the rest stop beckons with trees, grass, maybe even a stream, and a clean, quiet place to relieve one’s stretched bladder. One can walk about, have a healthy lunch on a picnic table, or read some local history, activities which enhance the feeling of humanity on an otherwise nondescript highway. Caffeine and Grease strip malls, on the other hand, assault the already travel-weary person with neon lights, fat- and sugar-filled fodder, and a harangue of noise. If anything, these commercialized “rest” stops should be banned on the grounds of public health.
Thank you for this piece Emily!!! The pics are beautiful and truly capture the great architecture and surroundings… My family drove all over the US and like so many, we looked forward to the ‘rest stop’ because it’s when we would eat, stretch, enjoy the outdoors – and of course use the restrooms!What’s sad to me is that our society has become soooo dependent on fast food, and in general Americans seem to favor instant gratification. Why sit with your family/travel partner/by yourself in the outdoors, eating a ‘packed meal’, talking, and admiring the State’s scenery, when you can instead stand in line for over-priced fast-food, expose yourself to the same neon signs that can be seen around the world, and become a drone? What can be done? Are there State websites GOOD readers can check out/petition? p.s. I hope you get a book deal with Chronicle or someone who will publish and document your great photos. Truly American and historic!
Politicians don’t do anything without some kind of expectation that it will gain them more campaign contributions.I expect that commercial interests (truck stops, McD’s, et al) had more to do with these decisions than “budget cuts.”
[...] Rest Stops Monday, June 29th, 2009 | Automotive, JFI1 Automotive People are walking dogs, eating lunch, stretching their legs, picking up brochures. It’s not just a toilet. [...]
Great idea,can’t wait to take a dump on the side of the
road.AHHH Freedom again.
We travel at night to avoid traffic, knowing the rest stops will always be open for the young ones. We have also used them to pull over when the weather changes and the roads are unsafe, once spending hours when the road ahead was flooded,but we were safe, as were the other 100 cars that kept us company. Yes it is an added expense for the states to keep up, but in these economicaly bad times they offer a more inexpensive way to make road trips, allowing families to pic-nic along the way, and as being “too cheap” to stop at a fast food to pee…shame on you if think they want your kids to troop in to pee without making a purchase… an unhealthy purchase at that.
I recognize quite a few of these rest area pictures. I’ve done a lot of driving over the years, all over the country. Just last summer I drove with my then-three year old twins from Virginia Beach to Salt Lake City to Seattle, and we stopped at a lot of rest stops. The big caffeinated corporate stops are nice for picking up a snack and gas and a quick restroom break, but with kids who want to stop and run around, they’re a nightmare. Unless those corporate stops plan to install playgrounds…