The Word "Motel" Was Invented in 1925 for One Roadside Inn in California

The word "motel" is barely a century old, and it was invented for a single building. On December 12, 1925, the Milestone Mo-Tel opened beside the highway in San Luis Obispo, California, charging $1.25 a night, and its owner squeezed "motor hotel" into a new word that the whole world still uses.

The man behind it was Arthur S. Heineman, a Pasadena developer who, with his brother Alfred, had built a successful business designing Arts and Crafts houses. According to the Society of Architectural Historians, neither brother had formal architectural training. What Arthur did have was a sharp sense of where travel was heading.

By the mid-1920s, Californians were driving everywhere, but the roads were slow and rough. Going from Los Angeles to San Francisco took about two days, and San Luis Obispo sits roughly 200 miles from each city, a full day's drive at the time. Drivers who stopped for the night usually had two choices: a formal downtown hotel with nowhere to park, or an auto camp with tents and tiny cabins clustered next to a gas station.

Heineman aimed for the gap between the two. His design borrowed the bungalow court, a type of garden housing first developed in Pasadena, and placed it on the roadside. White stucco bungalows with red tile roofs surrounded a courtyard with palm trees and a pool. Each unit had its own toilet, shower and washbasin, some had kitchenettes, and guests parked right outside their door or in a private garage.

The name came from a practical problem. "Motor hotel" was apparently too long to fit on the sign, so Heineman cut it down to "Mo-Tel." The New York Times reported that a sign at the entrance even explained to motorists how to pronounce the unfamiliar word.

It was not a cheap roadside shack. The complex cost $80,000 to build, could house up to 160 guests and had a dining room, a dance hall, a public kitchen, a laundry and a playground. A three-tiered bell tower in the style of California's Spanish missions rose above the office. One of the first waitresses later told the Seattle Times, as quoted by Smithsonian Magazine, that staff stood on the road handing brochures to drivers of Model Ts climbing the hill.

Heineman's real plan was much bigger. Through the Milestone Interstate Corporation, he and his partners wanted a chain of 18 motels spaced about a day's drive apart from San Diego to Seattle. It never happened. The brothers failed to register "motel" as a trademark, so anyone could use the word, cheaper competitors spread quickly, and the Great Depression dried up investment. They lost even the original property to foreclosure.

Renamed the Motel Inn, the business kept running for decades. The San Luis Obispo Tribune notes that Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio stopped there for lunch in 1954, during their honeymoon. It closed in 1991, and most of the bungalows were torn down in 2006 after years of decay. Only the bell tower, part of the lobby and a restaurant facade survive at 2223 Monterey Street.

Historians add one caveat. Earlier auto courts already existed, so the Milestone is best described as the first to call itself a motel. When it turned 100 in December 2025, KSBY reported that plans to rebuild the site were on hold, while the word it created had long since gone global.

Sources: California State Library, Celebrate California; SAH Archipedia; The New York Times (1987); Smithsonian Magazine (2016); Los Angeles Times (2011); San Luis Obispo Tribune (2023); KSBY (2025). Cover: Motel Inn, San Luis Obispo, John Margolies, 1978, public domain.tif).