Original Route 66 motel sign restored in Lee's Summit, sign will go to Joplin

KSHB 41 News reporter Braden Bates covers parts of Jackson County, Missouri, including Lee's Summit. Send Braden a story idea by e-mail.

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This year marks 100 years of Route 66 and a piece of the Mother Road's history is making its way back to the famous highway thanks to a shop in Lee's Summit.

A sign for Ozark Court in St. Clair, Missouri, crafted in 1952 for a small Missouri motel is heading to Joplin, where it will once again stand along Route 66.

"This is a grand sign," said Ben Wine, Fossil Forge's co-owner. "They would have spent a lot of their budget on just this sign trying to pull visitors off the road."

Neon played a big role for businesses who were marketing to travelers.

The better the sign, the more your business stood out.

"Just like most cool signs do to me, they just stop you in your tracks and you marvel at the beauty of it, the light, the dimension, the color," said Fossil Forge co-owner, Dave Eames.

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The sign spent more than two decades out of public view before it was found in 2022 in the archive of a private collector who passed away.

The sign later was taken to auction, where the Route 66 Association of Missouri placed the winning bid.

Fossil Forge's co-owners said they bid on the sign, but it wasn't enough. They said it's funny because it still ended up at their shop for the restoration.

"It was kind of rough when we first got it," Fossil Forge's Remy Norton-Hood said. "It was a lot to kind of cut out what was rotted and what needed to be replaced."

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Despite its years out of sight, the originality of the piece was mostly intact.

"Here's this 74-year-old piece of technology, completely mechanical, not digital at all," Eames said. "And you add power to it and it works and it works great."

With new neon lights, porcelain and mechanical problems fixed, the animated sign lights up once again.

The Route 66 Association of Missouri said the restoration effort is part of a broader mission to preserve the highway's roadside heritage.

"Our organization has been devoted to restoring signs where they may still exist along the famous highway," Robert Gehl said.

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He said this sign was a perfect ode to Missouri.

"We love it so much because it really represents our stretch of the of the highway through our state of Missouri," Gehl said. "It takes you to the road through the Ozarks."

Scott Sargent, 1990

The sign's story carries added significance in its centennial year. The original artist gained national recognition for his work. The same year he produced the sign, he also was featured in TIME Magazine.

Seigfried Reinhardt worked at his parents sign shop when he designed roadside art piece. The shop's name, "West Gate Neon," is still on the sign.

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The sign ended up near where it was built.

"It's just checking every box — Route 66, 100th birthday," Dave Eames said. "This guy was a veteran. He was an immigrant. They worked in a small town here in Missouri. I mean, there's just so many cool angles to his life and the story of this sign."

For the association, returning the sign to the road is a point of pride.

"It's a privilege to be able to bring this back to the road, you know, where it was born," Gehl said.

While this is a story of just one sign, many other original signs still sit lost.

But neon relighting Route 66 becoming a staple back on the Mother Road.

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