“And now the high mountains. Holbrook and Winslow and Flagstaff in the high mountains of Arizona. Then the great plateau rolling like a ground swell. Ash Fork and Kingman and stone mountains again, where water must be hauled and sold.”
– John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
A descending dark curtain of drought brought an abrupt end to the first act of good conditions on the Great Plains in the summer of 1930. Curtain rise ushered in a long tragic second act of environmental disaster and human suffering. After a decade of fortunate environmental circumstances with plentiful rainfall and mild winters, the Great Plains entered an extended drought in 1930 – commonly known as the Dust Bowl. The Great Depression appeared on stage the previous year. The region would not exit drought conditions until 1941. For one family, the drought began a Dust Bowl tragedy in three acts.
The Lanier Family
Born at the height of Grange-era populism in Magnolia, Arkansas in 1893, Hosea Lanier moved with his parents from their failed cotton farm to make a new start in Cottonwood, Texas at the age of seven. Despite plentiful rainfall and fertile soil, farming on the Great Plains was a fraught affair. Global agricultural competition drove crop prices down. Farm failures like the elder Lanier’s farm in Arkansas were common in the 1920s. Cotton prices peaked at 28 cents a pound in 1923. From there it was mostly downhill with prices typically fluctuating between 15 cents a pound to a low of 12 cents a pound.
For Hosea, deteriorating crop prices were background to his childhood. On the Texas farm he grew to adulthood, worked the land with his father, and married his best girl, Loree. His son Jack was born shortly after the marriage in 1917. His father, John Lanier, died five years later. It was 1922. His daughter Fay was born the following year. By most accounts, the winter of 1929 was like all the others in recent memory – mild. Hosea’s mother died in the spring of 1929. Hosea inherited the farm – and the debt. In the spring of ’29, despite losing his mother, the future looked promising for Hosea’s family and his farm. Conditions were good. Cotton was almost 17 cents a pound.
Fleeing the Dust Bowl
The exact motivations behind leaving the farm in 1930 are lost to the sands of time. The summer of 1930 was severely dry in Texas as the drought set in. It is likely Hosea suffered the fate of many farmers in the early drought years – a failed harvest, falling prices, mounting debts, and finally foreclosure. Cotton prices fell to 9 cents a pound in 1930 – by 1931 cotton farmers gave it away at 5 cents a pound.
Art often imitates life. Similar to Steinbeck’s Joad family, the Lanier family fled the emergent Dust Bowl in 1930. Like their fictional counterparts, the Laniers escaped down Route 66. The family settled first in Kingman, Arizona where Hosea found work as a clerk with the Central Commercial Company mercantile store. He was later transferred to the company’s new Seligman, Arizona location on Route 66 in 1942 serving as the store’s manager.[1] Rain had returned to the Texas plains the previous year. The price of cotton was now over 19 cents a pound.
Postwar Boom on Route 66
The Central Commercial Company’s store in Seligman sat right on Route 66. From his perch behind the large store window fronting Route 66, Hosea watched the growing traffic on Route 66 after WW2. He also had his eye on a large parcel of open land across the street from the Central Commercial Company. On February first, 1956, Hosea Lanier and his son Jack purchased 2.74 acres of land fronting U.S. Route 66 from the Arizona State Land Department. The purchase price was $7,272.72 to be paid in yearly installments of $191.38.[2] By 1956, several entrepreneurs had opened new businesses in Seligman capitalizing on the rising automobile traffic on Route 66. Juan Delgadillo, a local railroad laborer had opened the Snow Cap Drive In Restaurant in 1953 in a building he built from scrap lumber to huge success. Hosea figured he could go into business too.
In 1956, the Cold War was well under way. Americans were flocking to southern California brimming with defense jobs fueled by the Cold War military build-up. Route 66 provided the main route west and Americans jammed the road on their way to claim a portion of the southern California good life. Hosea Lanier, desiring to capitalize on the upswing in automobile traffic along Route 66, branched out on his own at the age of 63 and opened the Supai Motel.[3]
When new, the motel boasted of individual air conditioners by Frigidaire, Franciscan-style furniture, tile baths, and carpeted floors. The Supai Motel claimed to be the newest and finest motel in town.[4] Of a motor court design, it was a contiguous U-shaped building with a small parking lot in the center. Entering from Route 66, travelers stopped at the office on the west side of the U to check-in. Then, large metal key in hand, they move their car to park in front of their assigned unit – one of twelve available. From the outset, the motel featured a large roadside neon sign sporting the name of the motel in green and pink script towering over the motel office. The sign was backlit by a parallelogram whose bottom bar housed the word “Vacancy” in bright red neon. Looping out of the top of the bright, boxy shape was an arrow that sprouted up and out toward the road before curving back in to point in the direction of the motel office. Blinking lights festooned the arrow moving in a pattern from the top of the sign toward the arrow’s pointer visually pushing the eye toward the motel. In 1956, the Supai Motel joined eight other motels competing for traffic in Seligman. Competition was fierce. Catching the motorists’ eye was essential.[5]
Tragedy is a Fickle Mistress
The motel was a success. It still operates today. Yet tragedy is a fickle mistress. It gives scarcely a thought to some. Others are the focus of obsession. Hosea enjoyed only a brief moment of his success. After being ruined by the onset of the Dust Bowl, fleeing with his family for the high-desert wilds of Arizona, toiling for years as a department store clerk, and finally reclaiming some financial independence as a business owner, Hosea died March 25, 1959 – two and a half years after he opened his motel.
Tragedy once smitten with a family has a hard time letting go of its object of desire. Hosea’s son Jack stepped in after his father’s early death operating the business for his grieving mother. Just under a year later, 341 days after his father, Jack died on March 1, 1960. Loree sold the motel later that year. Loree and daughter Fay moved to Prescott. Loree did not remarry and lived to be 90 dying in 1987 – 28 years after Hosea. Fay never married or had any children. The curtain fell on the final act of this family of Dust Bowl refugees when Fay died eight years after her mother in Prescott in 1995.
[1] “1930 United States Federal Census,” (1930 United States Census, United States Government, Kingman, AZ, 1930). “1940 United States Federal Census,” (1940 United States Census, United States Government, Seligman, AZ, 1940). “Registration Card,” (Draft Registration Card, United States Government, Local Board Number 1, Yavapai County, Prescott, AZ, April 27, 1942).
[2] “Certificate of Purchase,” (Property Deed, Yavapai County Recorder’s Office, Prescott, AZ, 1974).
[3] “Funeral to be Conducted Today in Prescott for Hosea Lanier,” Arizona Republic (Phoenix, AZ), March 28, 1959.
[4] “Funeral to be Conducted Today in Prescott for Hosea Lanier,” Arizona Republic (Phoenix, AZ), March 28, 1959. Supai Motel. RT66-2116. 1956. James R. Powell Route 66 Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago. Accessed April 27, 2018.
[5] This description is based on my personal experience staying in the motel multiple times. Postcards from the late 1950s, however, show that the motel has changed little in appearance since 1956. See Supai Motel. RT66-2116, Postcard, 1956, James R. Powell Route 66 Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago. Accessed April 27, 2018.