Most people know the answer to the above question with regard to travel lodging these days. If you plan ahead, you get on the computer and check to see what hotels are available. But what if you lived during the days of the horse drawn carriage or early years of automobile travel? Same as today, if you had family or a good friend living in the place you wanted to visit, you would call upon those relationships for a short time.

Boarding houses were a common element during those times, but there was no phone system or directory to list commercial temporary housing. The first regular commercial housing came with the Chicago to Peoria stagecoach systems in 1834. The American House on Walnut Street was the first such facility in Chillicothe. As the town grew, the need for temporary housing also grew. The Cottage Hotel of Jacob Wirth was located on the east side in the middle of the 200 Block of Second Street. It was a two-story frame building with sleeping rooms.

In 1865, James Will, of Medina Township came to town and purchased land from Henry Truitt on the NW corner of Second and Cedar Street. A drawing of it appears in the 1873 Peoria County Atlas and it was named the Will House. That hotel has had many owners/operators and has been re-named at least six times. As fate would have it, it was finally condemned and purchased by the City of Chillicothe and torn down in September 2009. The parking lot of Nat’s Place now occupies that location.

Another hotel, the Old Union Hotel, was built on two lots on Third Street opposite City Park in about 1865. It was a three-story structure. A chimney fire broke out but was controlled. The third floor had to be removed. The building was again the victim of a fire in December 1912 when the White Kitchen Café caught fire. The two buildings were only ten feet apart when the White Kitchen fire ignited the hotel. Although no one was killed in the event, the building was reduced to rubble.

The next period of development of hotels came with the arrival of the Santa Fe Railroad in 1888. A.S. and Ruth Bickel built a boarding house on a lot on the Right of Way line on the east side of Santa Fe Avenue. In about 1915 it became the Maxfield Hotel which burned in 1924. In 1916 funding efforts to build a new three-story brick hotel on the west side of Santa Fe Avenue were announced by Mayor Mitchell. It would be called the Midland Hotel. That building would become the Santa Fe Railroad Employee Center by 1930. After renovations, it later became the AMTRAK Train Station.

Hotel accommodations remained at this level until Ed and Gertrude Motteler ushered in the first motel in Chillicothe. Motteler’s Thunderbird Motel opened in 1956. Only the rental rooms remain today and are at 328 S. Fourth Street and known as Economy Inn. The final entry into the world of hotels in Chillicothe was Motel 6 in 1998, situated at 615 Plaza Drive and McGrath Avenue. It is now known as Econo Lodge.