"Are We There Yet?" - Mid 20th Century Vacations, Highways, Motels, Neon Signs... (Season 3, Ep. 4)

**Brad Westwood** (0:10)
Welcome to the podcast Speak Your Piece. This is a podcast about Utah's history produced by the Utah Department of Culture and Community Engagement. I'm Brad Westwood, Senior Public Historian. My job is to make the very best, the most interesting and most accurate history of Utah, accessible to the widest audience. If there's one place, one podcast to get your Utah history fix, I hope this is the place. Today's episode is about the history of travel in the 20th century. The American Vacation. All the roadside architecture, built environment, everything that surrounds us. Roads, byways, towns and cities, all about vacationing.
If you subscribe to the podcast or if this is the first time listening, I hope you'll go back and listen to dozens of other prior episodes. Please also rate and review Speak Your Piece on iTunes, Google and elsewhere.
My guests today are Dr. Susan Rugh, a professor of history at Brigham Young University and longtime Dean of Undergraduate Education there.
Lisa-Michele Church is my second guest and she's the former vice president and general counsel for Sinclair Companies and a former board member and advisor to the Sundance Institute. And twice she has been a cabinet member to two Utah governors. Good morning Susan, good morning Lisa-Michele.

**Susan Rugh** (1:34)
Good morning Brad.

**Brad Westwood** (1:36)
I've wanted to have the two of you on this show for quite some time.
More detailed bios for both Susan and Lisa-Michele will be included in the show notes. I will say however that we'll be talking about Dr. Rugh's 2008 book, Are We There Yet? The Golden Age of the American Family Vacation. Mrs. Church's yet to be published work on Utah's vintage neon signs and combined their expertise in American and Utah vacation history, the vintage road architecture and attractions, and the general history of travel in the 20th century. The show notes can direct you to how to buy the books and find out more about our guests and their online related historical materials.
Now, with COVID-19 restrictions cautiously easing, and with many of us receiving one of three amazing COVID-19 vaccines, many Utahns are now making up for past vacations postponed during the last year. With the prior restrictions on air travel and foreign travel, and even with the varied state public health restrictions, many of us cautiously ventured out close to home during the last year, following all of the health guidelines, and we discovered or rediscovered the vast and varied, cultural rich, less traveled places of our state here of Utah. Places that we just would not have enjoyed and experienced. So today we're going to ask you to think about Utah in a different way, to get out and see the different places that are around us that are really quite remarkable. So with that, let's start with a question for Lisa-Michele. Would you describe one or two of the most memorable historic Utah neon signs, maybe examples that really stand out to you in your study, that we would want our listeners to seek out and experience?

**Lisa-Michele Church** (3:38)
Sure. I love that. It's hard to choose my favorite. There's so many good ones.
Okay. I would direct your listeners to Sands Motel on the Boulevard in St. George. It's one of the 1950 signs that's still there. It's very large and very beautifully lit.
It actually cost the motel owners quite a bit to keep it lit, the original neon, but it's fabulous. It's just a swim pool is in neon and then the huge letters Sands, and it just glows out at you if you're driving down the Boulevard about seven at night is the best time to see it.

**Brad Westwood** (4:15)
It's sundown.

**Lisa-Michele Church** (4:16)
It's sundown. It's very evocative of a road trip in the 1950s. There's some great neon all over the state though, and kudos to the people who've preserved it. That really makes me happy to see that they've preserved it because it's expensive to keep intact.
Mrs. Bakker's pastry shop right here on South Temple by our studio, she keeps that up and it's bright pink neon. It's fabulous and it's really ornate. So if you're driving up South Temple at evening, you can see that lit.

**Brad Westwood** (4:50)
I'm sure you've been to the Las Vegas Neon Museum.

**Lisa-Michele Church** (4:54)
Yes.

**Brad Westwood** (4:55)
Isn't that a remarkable place? All the graveyard of signs.
There's nothing quite like everything lit up as it was originally.

**Lisa-Michele Church** (5:03)
Right, and I love that some businesses will like the bowling alley sign on 21st South and State in Salt Lake City, Ritz Classic.
They did redo it in LED and some people are snobs and they're like, it has to be the original neon. But I'm just so thankful that they kept the sign and they're actually Ritz Classic Apartments now. There's no bowling alley, but the bowling pin sign is still there.