Let’s start off with a couple buildings. The Royal Theatre is in Versailles. The neon appears to be in good shape:

This restored Skelly gas station is in Stover. It now houses an ice cream shop:

Let’s move on to some statues. This Mortimer Snerd statue in Lake Ozark was restored and reinstalled earlier this year (across the street from another International Fiberglass statue, an Indian Chief, which was restored in 2016). For more about these Mortimer Snerd statues, see my website here: https://www.roadarch.com/giants/ifsnerds.html

This wood-carved fisherman and animals is located in Stockton:

This swan is installed in front of a house in Warrensburg. The bird’s back has a little slide and there are some built-in steps on the other side. I suspect this was used in conjunction with a pool:

This former Sirloin Stockade bull is located in Windsor. I have dozens of these statues at my website here:
https://www.roadarch.com/critters/bulls2.html

This Rexall Drug is in Warsaw. Notice the under canopy plastic sign which are even rarer now than the panel signs above:

This motel sign in Eldon was blown apart into 40 pieces by a tornado in 2019. The panels were bent and all of the neon and bulbs were destroyed. Here’s what some of the sign looked like.

This video shows the damage and restoration of the sign and buildings:

The owners got it all put back together and reinstalled the following year. Here’s what it looks like now:

Lee Mace’s Ozark Opry in Osage Beach opened in 1953. By the 1960s, (unknown photographer, photo from 1988 at Facebook shown below), the Ozark Opry panel had letters on top of corrugated plastic. I suspect that part of the sign was neon originally but I can’t find any early photos. Or it’s possible there was another pole sign there that was replaced with this one in the 1960s.

After closing in 2005, the building sat empty until it became a Sears in 2014. The Ozark Opry panel was replaced with new flat panel then. In 2023, the building began housing a Harbor Freight store and the sign was adapted again:

Stewart’s Restaurant opened in 1953 in Lake Ozark. Earlier this year, the business and sign moved down the street to this former hotel/gas station/cafe:

I don’t know if the sign was built in 1953 or later. The oval must have been added after the 1960s:

This sign is in Bolivar. Goldena’s opened in 1988. This sign is probably from the 1960s and must have had a different name before Goldena’s took over.

This sign is in Camdenton. The motel has been there since at least 1960. The sign had slightly different wording then but the same neon star:

This one is in Warsaw. The motel was built in 1940 but the sign is probably from the 1950s:

This sign is in Lake Ozark and is probably from the 1950s. Evidently, the arrow was added later:

The motel has closed and there are plans to demolish it. I don’t know what the plans are for the sign.

That’s it for now. There was a delay for this post since I took a couple of extended weekends trips to shoot things in the Los Angeles/Orange County area and on the way to/from NeonSpeaks in San Francisco. I’ll sneak in some blog posts for those trips soon before we get back to the Missouri stuff.

Happy trails,
dj & the dogs

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