Wigwam Motel

The village began with a large wigwam-shaped office and 11 cabins in a semicircle around a grassy area with a fire pit and picnic tables. As traffic grew, Redford added eight more units in a second semicircle behind the first, making 19. The Park Service gives each sleeping unit as 32 feet tall and 20 feet across at the base. A third row was planned and one foundation survives, but those units were never built.

Redford fell ill and an old friend took over the business. According to the Park Service, later owners did not maintain it and the village gained a seedy reputation. A family who had run a nearby motel since the mid-1980s bought it in 2002 and restored it. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012, and GoRoute66 reports that it won the Cyrus Avery Award in 2005.

The Park Service notes that wigwam and teepee architecture are very different, and calls the misnomer indicative of the common stereotyping of American Indian tribal culture at the time. It adds that the motel is depicted as the Cozy Cone Motel in the film Cars.

GoRoute66 described it in June 2026 as a working motel, so the way to see inside a wigwam is to stay in one.