Morrow’s Station

In 1932, George B. Morrow, a merchant and farmer from Iberia, Missouri, purchased three and a half acres of land at the western edge of Springfield on West Kearney Street, which had become part of Route 66 through the city. An entrepreneur who founded his own trucking line in 1926, the same year that US 66 was officially designated, Morrow had observed the rise in family-owned businesses on the new highway and bought the property to open a filling station. It was emblematic of the multitude of personal enterprises that arose during the age of the automobile in America.

The increase in businesses along Route 66 paralleled the progress of the Good Roads Movement in Missouri. By the 1920s, Good Roads advocates had secured the passage of several key pieces of legislation that would transform Missouri’s roadways. Buoyed by state and federal funding for road construction, Missouri’s muddy thoroughfares were being replaced with paved modern roads. America’s embrace of the automobile also resulted in the rise of independent leisure travel, which opened a range of opportunities for businesses that catered to motorists eager to explore Missouri and the wider United States. Nowhere was this spirit of adventure more apparent than on Route 66, whose plethora of filling stations, hotels, motor courts, restaurants, and tourist resorts are still engrained in the American consciousness decades after the road fell out of mainstream use. 

To save money on construction, Morrow and his sons Jewell and Jennings hauled worm rock and gravel from nearby farms for the filling station’s exterior. The Morrows framed the building and then hired two stonemasons to apply the stone veneer. The use of rock masonry was not unusual; entrepreneurs often followed regional trends, and it was common in the Ozarks region to use worm rock and unshaped fieldstone for homes and other structures due to its abundance and cost-effectiveness. Morrow’s station reflected a vernacular building style that can still be seen in numerous buildings in southwest Missouri and on Route 66 in the Ozarks.

The station functioned as a housestore, serving as both a business and a residence for the Morrows. The front portion consisted of a large room with shelves, a counter, and stools. Along with gasoline, customers could purchase bread, candy, milk, and other supplies. George’s wife, Ethel, prepared sandwiches for travelers in the rear of the building where the Morrows’ living quarters and kitchen were located; customers were served at a small table in the front of the business. Three pumps out front supplied Tidex and Tydol regular and ethyl gasoline as well as additive-free white (ethanol) gas. The family kept a Guernsey milk cow in the field behind the station. 

Two years after the station opened, the Morrows added two one-room cabins for overnight travelers. They had plans to add more, but following George Morrow’s death in 1934 no additional cabins were built. After the newly widowed Ethel Morrow purchased a home on Broadway Avenue in Springfield, her son Jewell managed the station. He was assisted by his wife, Brownie, and younger brother Joe. In March 1938, Morrow’s station was rented out while Jewell worked in the defense industry. Jewell, Brownie, and their two small children moved back to the station grounds in 1940 and resumed running the business.

Ethel sold the property in 1943 after a contentious dispute with a tenant who converted one of the tourist cabins into a chicken coop. The buildings were later demolished. In 1956 construction began on Interstate 44. The new highway, which bypassed Route 66, became the principal roadway for motorists and truck traffic traveling from St. Louis to southwest Missouri and beyond. Its completion meant businesses on the older road were cut off from the traffic that served as their lifeblood, bringing an end to many roadside places like Morrow’s station.