Route 66 roadhouse
During a work trip to St. Louis, I recently spotted Stovall’s Grove and knew I had to make a stop.
The sign is easy to miss if you’re not looking for it, a small building tucked along an old stretch of Route 66 outside St. Louis. But once I saw it, there was no driving past. Some places just pull you in.
Walking through the door felt like time stood still. I’d wandered in right as a line dancing class was getting started, boots shuffling across an old wood floor that’s absorbed eight decades of Friday nights. I looked at the concert bill posters and absorbed the nostalgia.
The walls carry the whole history of the place in photographs and posters, a rundown of the country-and-western acts that have played this roadhouse long before I was born. Hank Williams, Webb Pierce, Marty Robbins and Zeke Clement, to name a few. Names that used to come out of my dad’s AM truck radio on the drive to Manly to watch the trains or Leland for a cheap car wash.
He would’ve been in heaven at Stovall’s. There’s no doubt about that.
Stovall’s Grove has been standing since 1935, when George and Mollie Stovall opened it as a roadside tavern with a dance hall out back. Route 66 ran right past the front door then, and it still does now, or what’s left of it. The place has burned once, been rebuilt, and kept right on hosting bands and dancers through it all. That kind of longevity isn’t common. Most roadhouses like this one are long gone, paved over or boarded up. Stovall’s is still open, probably still loud on a Friday night and still exactly what it was meant to be when it opened.
What struck me wasn’t the history so much as how alive the place still felt. The dance floor was full, and a room full of strangers was about to spend a couple of hours dancing to the same beat. I’m sure it’s the kind of thing that used to happen at roadhouses along the entire length of Route 66.
I ordered a beer, found a spot along the wall, and let the room do its thing around me. Somewhere between the boot scoots and the old photographs of bands I recognized from my dad’s record collection, I stopped thinking about the drive back to my hotel. It was nice to stay a while and soak up the tunes.
If you find yourself anywhere near St. Louis and you’ve got even a little bit of country music running through your blood, find your way to Stovall’s Grove. Go on a night when the band’s playing. Order something off the menu, walk around the room and take in the memorabilia. You’ll feel it too, that pull of a road that used to carry travelers west, and a roadhouse that never stopped playing its music.
Some stops on Route 66 you take because they’re famous. Stovall’s Grove, you take, because it’s real. I’m glad I was able to experience it.