White Oaks Motel on Route 29, Amherst, VA, 1960

About this postcard

The White Oaks Motel was a single-story red-brick motor court with a white hipped roof and a porch carried by a row of white columns. A broad paved drive and a green lawn shaded by tall oaks led past a small red "ENTRANCE" sign, with the roadside sign reading "WHITE OAKS MOTEL." The court stood two miles north of Sweet Briar on Route 29 outside Amherst, Virginia, in the Piedmont south of Lynchburg. Its printed advertisement listed "12 new units," air-conditioning, tile baths, and foam rubber mattresses, the postwar roadside comforts that drew auto travelers. Mr. and Mrs. R. C. Phillips ran the place. In August 1960 a traveler mailed the card from Charlotte, North Carolina, to the traveler's mother in Mansfield, Pennsylvania, after visiting Jean Watson. The note said it was good to see them again after years and that the traveler would leave that morning, probably not going all the way home that day. The note is a small trace of the long motor trips that roadside courts served in the early 1960s.