Lincoln Motel

Hugh and Sara Smith were local Chandler residents who built the Lincoln Motel in 1939 — a moment in Route 66's commercial history when small independent operators were the dominant force in American roadside lodging. The national chain motel format did not yet exist; the typical Route 66 lodging operator was a local couple or family who built and ran a property themselves, often with stock motor-court plans adapted to a specific local site. The Smiths followed that template — they hired Chandler-area builders, used the standard U-shape motor-court layout, and opened the property to overnight traffic on what was then the busiest highway in Oklahoma east of Oklahoma City.

The motel originally included roughly a dozen standalone stucco bungalow rooms around the U-shaped drive, plus the small office at the head of the U facing East 1st Street. Each bungalow had a single guest room with a private bathroom — a meaningful upgrade over the earlier 1920s tourist-camp model in which bathrooms were typically shared. The Smiths' decision to build with private bathrooms was a deliberate competitive choice; it positioned the Lincoln a notch above the cheapest tourist camps and aimed at the mid-budget overnight traveler who wanted privacy without paying urban hotel rates.

Ownership has changed hands several times across the eight-plus decades since the Smiths built the property. The current ownership has held the motel since the 2010s and is responsible for the most recent interior renovations and the ongoing maintenance of the original neon sign. Front-desk staffing is generally local and informal — there is no national reservation system, no loyalty program, and no corporate brand standards. The property operates exactly as small independent Route 66 motels operated in 1939, just with renovated rooms and a working internet connection.

The U-shape stucco-bungalow layout is the most visually distinctive feature of the Lincoln and the one that most directly shapes the overnight guest experience. Rather than walking down an interior hallway from a lobby to your room, guests park directly outside their own door — the original 1939 selling point of the motor-court format, intended to make highway travel with luggage as frictionless as possible. The drive into the U-shape court itself is part of the arrival experience; you pull in past the office, park beside your bungalow, and walk a few steps to your door.

Each bungalow is a small standalone structure with stucco exterior walls and a low flat-or-shallow-pitched roof. The proportions are intimate by modern standards — the rooms are smaller than a typical chain-motel room — but the layout produces a sense of privacy and quiet that long shared-wall buildings rarely match. Sound from neighboring rooms is minimal because each bungalow is physically separated by a few feet of exterior wall and outside air. The court itself is well-lit at night by the restored neon and by ambient parking-lot lighting, so walking from your car to your room after dark is comfortable and feels safe.

The U-shape also creates a small central social space. Guests who want to sit outside after dark — read, smoke, take photos of the lit neon — can sit at the small outdoor seating area near the office or on the bench outside their own bungalow. This is closer to the original 1939 motor-court experience than to a modern motel; there is no breakfast room, no fitness center, no business center, and the social space of the property is simply the U-shaped drive and the area around the office.

The rooms were renovated by the current ownership during the 2010s — a careful update that brought the interiors to modern budget-motel standards without erasing the property's historic character. The renovation typically included new mattresses and beds (comfortable, modern, generally queen-size in standard rooms), updated bathrooms with modern fixtures and tile, fresh paint, updated electrical and HVAC, new flooring, and modern flat-screen TVs. The work was budget-tier rather than luxury-grade, but it produced rooms that are clean, comfortable, and serviceable for an overnight stay.

The vintage character was deliberately preserved in the exterior shells and in several interior details. The original 1939 windows remain in most bungalows — the slightly imperfect proportions and the visible age of the frames are part of the property's authenticity. The stucco exterior walls were repaired but not refaced, so the bungalows still read visually as 1939 motor-court buildings rather than as modernized impostors. Interior trim, original door hardware where it survived, and various small period details were retained where practical.

Standard rooms typically include one queen or full bed, a private bathroom with a shower (no tub in most rooms), a small desk or table, a TV, climate control, and free Wi-Fi. Coffee is generally available at the office in the morning rather than in-room. There are no minibars, no in-room safes, and no robes — the amenity stack is intentionally minimal. The trade-off is the experience: you are sleeping in a 1939 building that has hosted Route 66 travelers continuously since the Smiths opened the property, which no chain motel anywhere on the highway can offer.

The tall vertical "LINCOLN" neon sign at the head of the property is the original 1939 sign, restored in 2003 by the then-ownership. The restoration repaired the original neon tubing, reconditioned the transformer and wiring, repainted the painted-metal surfaces, and brought the sign back to full nightly working order. It is now consistently cited by Route 66 photographers as one of the best surviving original-neon signs on the entire Oklahoma stretch of the highway. As a guest at the Lincoln, the sign is your view — it sits at the front of the property and is visible from most of the U-shape court after dark.

Practical guest implication: the sign is on every night, which means the front of the property is brightly lit. Guests who are sensitive to outdoor light should request a room toward the back of the U where the sign's glow is less direct. Conversely, guests who specifically want the full Route 66 experience should request a front-facing room so the neon glow comes through the curtain after dark. Most guests find the sign light atmospheric rather than disruptive, but it is meaningfully brighter than the ambient lighting at a typical chain motel.

The sign is photographable from inside the property as well as from East 1st Street. Guests staying overnight have the advantage of being able to photograph the sign at multiple times — dusk, full dark, late evening, and the brief blue-hour window just before sunrise — without having to drive back to Chandler on a separate trip. This is a small but real perk for serious Route 66 photographers, several of whom book the Lincoln specifically to extend their available shooting time.

Booking is handled directly with the motel — there is no app, no loyalty program, and no major aggregator listing in most cases. Travelers can call ahead at +1 405-258-2737 to reserve a room, or simply stop at the office on arrival; the property is small enough that walk-up availability is usually fine outside major Route 66 event weekends. Reservations a few days in advance are recommended for weekend stays during peak Route 66 tourism months (April through October) and essential for the 2026 Route 66 Centennial event windows when Chandler-area lodging fills up early.

The motel is pet-friendly — a meaningful advantage for road-trippers traveling with dogs, who often find pet policy at small independent properties more flexible than at chains. There is typically a modest per-night pet fee. The U-shape court provides a quiet enclosed space for dog walks, and the property's general informality means pet owners can come and go without the surveillance-camera anxiety of a chain hotel lobby. Check-in is generally from 3pm onward; check-out is typically 11am. The office is staffed in person during normal daytime hours and has a phone number for after-hours arrivals.

Travelers who haven't stayed at small independent properties before should set expectations appropriately. The Lincoln is not a luxury experience; it is a budget motel with historic bones. Service is friendly and informal rather than scripted and corporate. The amenity stack is minimal. Wi-Fi works but is not enterprise-grade. The rooms are clean and comfortable but small. For travelers who go in with the right expectations — that the experience is the building and the highway, not the towels and the gym — the Lincoln is one of the best authentic overnight stops on the Oklahoma stretch of Route 66.

An overnight at the Lincoln pairs naturally with the rest of Chandler's small but substantive Route 66 stack. The Route 66 Interpretive Center — housed in a beautifully restored 1937 WPA fieldstone armory a few blocks west on East Route 66 — is the natural indoor counterpart to the Lincoln's outdoor architecture and is open Tuesday through Saturday. Granny's Country Kitchen on the same East 1st Street strip is the standard local breakfast and lunch stop. The Seaba Station Motorcycle Museum, in a restored 1920s filling station about 12 miles east in Warwick, makes a logical morning departure stop before continuing toward Tulsa.

Chandler's geographic position makes the Lincoln particularly useful as a strategic overnight base. The motel is roughly 35 miles west of Oklahoma City and 65 miles east of Tulsa, which puts it almost exactly at the midpoint of the OKC-Tulsa Route 66 corridor. Travelers driving the historic alignment east-to-west or west-to-east often find that a night in Chandler breaks the corridor into two manageable half-day driving segments rather than one long single-day push. Arcadia's Round Barn and POPS 66 soda stop are 15 miles west — about 20 minutes by car — and make a natural late-afternoon arrival activity before checking in to the Lincoln for the night.

For the 2026 Route 66 Centennial year specifically, the Lincoln is one of the better small-town overnight options for travelers who want their commemoration trip to include actual historic lodging. The combination of the 1939 motor court architecture, the restored original neon, the central position on the Oklahoma alignment, and the genuinely affordable rates makes the property a strong fit for centennial road-trippers who are spacing their trip across multiple overnight stops rather than concentrating in OKC and Tulsa.