Roadrunner Motor Hotel, San Bernardino 1972

This photograph shows the Roadrunner Motor Hotel in San Bernardino in 1972, during the height of the classic American roadside lodging era. With its two-story courtyard layout, exterior walkways, metal balcony rails, and a large, highway-facing rooftop sign, the Roadrunner represents the familiar postwar “motor hotel” style that catered to motorists long before corporate hotel chains standardized the landscape.

San Bernardino, sitting along the historic alignment of Route 66, was a major crossroads city at the time—serving desert travelers, long-haul truckers, and families on Western road trips. The nearby National Orange Show fairgrounds, rail terminals, and Norton Air Force Base brought a steady flow of visitors, making motels like the Roadrunner a common stopover for both short stays and cross-country journeys.

The bold rooftop sign, perched above the parking lot on a steel frame, is a classic detail of the era: oversized, eye-catching, and designed to draw the attention of drivers from a distance. The motel’s no-nonsense courtyard parking arrangement and simple, functional architecture reflect a time when convenience, affordability, and visibility mattered more than branding or amenities.

Today, the same building still stands at 1280 South E Street, though it has undergone multiple renovations and name changes. It now operates as the Orange Show Inn, serving guests just as the Roadrunner once did—though the original sign, colors, and 1970s character have long since disappeared.

Even so, the bones of the structure remain recognizable, and this image preserves the motel at its peak: clean-lined, automobile-oriented, and unmistakably part of the Route 66 roadside landscape that defined mid-century travel in Southern California.