The Red Cedar Inn opened in

Pacific, Missouri Pacific (formerly Franklin) is a city in the U.S. state of Missouri in eastern Franklin County and extending to the east into southwest St. Louis County. The population was 7,002 at the 2010 census. History Early history (1820-1864) Througho ...

, just after

Prohibition Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic ...

ended. In 1932,

Route 66 U.S. Route 66 or U.S. Highway 66 (US 66 or Route 66) was one of the original highways in the United States Numbered Highway System. It was established on November 11, 1926, with road signs erected the following year. The h ...

reached Pacific, and the town got an economic boost. Before that, Pacific's main commerce had been the mining of

silica Silicon dioxide, also known as silica, is an oxide of silicon with the chemical formula , most commonly found in nature as quartz and in various living organisms. In many parts of the world, silica is the major constituent of sand. Silica is one ...

used to make fine glassware and construction materials, such as bricks. The Red Cedar Inn was a full-service restaurant and served cocktails, since Prohibition had been repealed just before its opening. The inn became popular with travelers on Route 66 and was visited by baseball players

Bob Klinger Robert Harold Klinger (June 4, 1908 – August 19, 1977) was a professional baseball player who was a right-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball over parts of eight seasons from 1938 through 1947. He played for the Pittsburgh Pirates and the B ...

Dizzy Dean Jay Hanna "Dizzy" Dean (January 16, 1910 – July 17, 1974), also known as Jerome Herman Dean (both the 1910 and 1920 Censuses show his name as "Jay"), was an American professional baseball pitcher. During his Major League Baseball (MLB) career ...

, and

Ted Williams Theodore Samuel Williams (August 30, 1918 – July 5, 2002) was an American professional baseball player and manager. He played his entire 19-year Major League Baseball (MLB) career, primarily as a left fielder, for the Boston Red Sox from 1939 ...

. Brothers James and Bill Smith constructed the inn with rustic materials, such as log and knotty pine interior walls and lines of white chinking on the outside. The logs used to build the restaurant came from the brothers' family farm. They wanted the inn to reflect Missouri pioneer days and attract tourists. The brothers had made their living bootlegging liquor from their family farm at Villa Ridge. However, when Prohibition ended in 1933, their business folded. James and Bill both opened taverns, in

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and Fenton, respectively. They built the Red Cedar Inn around the same time on the newly designated Route 66. The restaurant's location made it very successful, and the Smiths added a bar to the restaurant in 1935. In its early years, the inn provided gasoline service from two pumps in front of the building. Gasoline sales were eventually halted to focus efforts on the restaurant business. Once the brothers were finished building the restaurant, they handed management over to James II. James II later married one of the restaurant's waitresses, Katherine Brinkman, and they bought the business from James I in 1944. They ran the business with their children, James III and Virginia "Ginger" Smith, until 1972, when James II retired. The inn was leased for some time before being temporarily shuttered until 1987. Katherine, James III, and Ginger reopened the restaurant in 1987, and it was managed for several years by Wes Karna before being closed again in 2005. In April 2003, the inn was listed in the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

. The restaurant closed in 2005. In 2010, James III began turning the inn into the Historic Red Cedar Business Center. The restaurant's kitchen was changed, but otherwise the structure remained intact. In 2012, the Olson family started a

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page for the inn and indicated that it was closed. The city of Pacific bought the building in 2017 for $290,000 with the intent to convert it into a genealogy and history center and museum, although since the purchase the final use of the property has been open to public comment, with an expected final decision to be made in summer 2019.

References

{{commonscat, Red Cedar Inn (Pacific, Missouri) U.S. Route 66 Restaurants in Missouri