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Denise McKinney says she has probably somewhere close to half a million matchbooks tucked away inside her Riverside home.
She’s been collecting for years and will typically pick up whatever strikes her fancy, no pun intended. She has specialties now, like matchbooks with animals on them or matchbooks that advertise radio and TV stations, but she says her biggest collection by far is books from Southern California, including vintage motel matchbooks.
The motel turns 100. Discover the state’s finest roadside havens — and the best stops alongside the way in which.
The president of the Angelus Matchcover Membership says she likes matchbooks due to how they mirror a area’s historical past. She’s grabbed books that tout Route 66 points of interest or locations from her Orange County hometown.
Matchbook collectors Olivia Frescura, Robert Donnelson, Denise McKinney and Cheryl Crill.
(Amanda Villegas / For The Occasions)
This 12 months marks the one hundredth anniversary of the motel, an idea that originated with the Milestone Mo-Tel in San Luis Obispo (later renamed the Motel Inn). Although it didn’t turn into extensively identified till after World Warfare II, “motel” is basically a portmanteau for “motor hotel,” or a lodging place the place the rooms might be entered by the car parking zone fairly than by a central foyer.
To get vacationers within the door, motels used gimmicks to face out among the many stiff competitors, like neon indicators and themed decor, but in addition promotional supplies like free postcards and pocket-sized matchbooks. With the one hundredth anniversary in thoughts, we needed to look again at a few of Southern California’s motel historical past as seen by collectors’ matchbooks. These books symbolize only a small fraction of the hundreds of motels which have operated within the area however are an excellent place to start out.
