Log City

Log City was a filling station, tourist camp, store, and café on Route 66 in Jasper County, Missouri. Although accounts of its origins vary, local newspaper coverage indicates that in 1928 Carl Stansbury purchased five-and-a-half acres of land roughly fifteen miles east of Carthage. A native of Illinois, Stansbury lived in Amsterdam, Missouri, prior to purchasing the property. It is unclear why he moved from Bates County to Jasper County to open Log City, but Stansbury’s daughter Alleen remembered her father as a “farmer who always had ideas about adventure.” The Carthage Evening Press reported that Stansbury planned to build a log cabin gas station, tourist cabins, restaurant, swimming pool, and playground on his new property. His plan took shape, and Log City found its place among the many small-scale entrepreneurial ventures launched by Americans who were drawn to the opportunities created by increased automobile travel on new highways such as Route 66. 

The same year he purchased the land, Stansbury paid locals to construct a housestore, which served as both a business and a residence, out of the trees cleared from the property. The filling station and store opened in February 1928 as construction continued on the business’s power-generating plant and log cabins. Stansbury’s ownership of Log City did not last long. Although he did not apparently feel threatened when a similar business called Stone City opened nearby, Stansbury’s daughter recalled that within a year another gas station, Forest Park Camp, was in business on the other side of the road, and that Stansbury believed it “would ruin his business so he decided to sell.” He reportedly sold the property in April 1930 to Charles Anderson, who in turn owned Log City for only a short period of time before selling it to William “Billy” Baker. Baker built on a large dining room and served alcohol and chicken dinners. He also added a barber shop. 

Baker continued to improve the amenities at Log City, turning it into an established rest stop familiar to Route 66 motorists in the 1930s and 1940s. Baker ran the business until July 1949, when he and his wife, Billie, sold the property to Darrell L. Scott of Springfield, Missouri. Scott’s tenure did not last long; he put Log City up for public auction on April 20, 1950. An advertisement for the sale in the Carthage Evening Press gives an idea of how Carl Stansbury’s rustic tourist camp had evolved over time. It now featured fourteen cabins with innerspring mattresses, electricity, heat, and in some both bath and showers. Each cabin had a garage. Guests could patronize a lunchroom, private dining room, and banquet room. The gas station boasted four fuel pumps and a liquor store. There was a modern house for the owner built with rock on site. While it was not uncommon for businesses in the Ozarks to be built from on-site materials to save on costs, Stansbury and his successors shrewdly used them to create a distinctive rustic log and stone architecture that held its own in the free-for-all to capture the traveler’s attention.

Billy Baker and his son-in-law Howard Gaddy bought back Log City at the 1950 auction and reopened it. After Baker sold Log City for the second and final time, it changed hands several more times over the years. When Interstate 44 bypassed Route 66 in the 1960s, business dwindled, and Log City eventually closed. Little remains of the original site.