According the wikipedia, the Shady Rest Hotel was located about halfway between Pixley and Hooterville. I seem to remember that if anyone there wanted to get to either town, they had to wait for the train in one direction or another. (I seem to remember Uncle Joe on a pump-car sometimes to get hither or yon. Hilarity often ensued because of near collisions with trains.)
The Cafe Society question is: was the Shady Rest accessible only by train?
But if so, what I’m more curious about is the GQ question: did hotels like this exist in the US back in the day, and if so, why? I’m not clear why a person would need to stay overnight in the middle of nowhere, when they could (presumably) just stay on the train and keep traveling. At least to the next town where there was presumably slightly more to do.
People might be looking for peace and quiet, or the hotel could be at a resort destination accessible by train. Several railroads were promoting this idea back in the day. Fred Harvey built a series of hotels that were basically part of the train stations…though most had roadway access as well.
Another thing, back in the age of steam, trains had to stop frequently for water. So if there was a good water source, there would be a train stop, but probably not with pretty girls bathing in the water tank!
If the train was stopping anyway, you might as well put in a station so a station master could relay train orders from the telegraph. If you had a station master, then you might as well have a little station and do mail, freight, and passenger service for the surrounding area.
Dieselfication killed a lot of little not-quite towns that only existed due to the need for the trains to stop for water, and the railroads trying to get a little more bang out of the required stop. A few hang on due to tourist trade, but not many.
The Shady Rest was at least somewhat accessible by car, because Oliver and Lisa Douglas would drive over from Green Acres in his big Lincoln Continental. However, Kate, Joe and the girls didn’t need a car because they had the train.
As for the bigger answer, it’s what Kevbo said. The hotel was there because there was a water stop there. And it wasn’t unusual to have a hotel on the rail line. When developers built Meramec Highlands resort outside of St. Louis, they built a station and gave it to the railroad in exchange for the railroad stopping at the hotel.
Another point:
" In the series pilot, it was established that the branch line had become separated from the main part of the railroad several years earlier, but that nobody had ever bothered to do anything about it, so the crew just kept operating the Cannonball on the remaining section of track."
Plus, if it was really a junction, people would be given the opportunity to change trains and might have to wait. Also trains might be broken up with some cars going one way and some the other, and some members of the crew might lay over and stay.
From my very vague memories of the show I don’t recall that there was more than one line there. Maybe it was a former junction and one of the lines was abandoned. But in any case there might be a station and not a whole lot more at a junction.
I’ve read that there is some restaurant in Canada or somewhere that is 100 miles from anyplace, but features a landing strip. Supposedly it does booming trade from pilot hobbyists looking for a reason to fly someplace.
In Scotland, the Corrour Station House Restaurant, which also offers accommodation, is accessible only via the adjacent Corrour Station on the scenic West Highland Line (4 trains each way weekdays, 3 on weekends). The nearest road of any kind is about 10 miles away, across rugged terrain.
There is also a Youth Hostel within walking distance.
The area around Finse station on the railway line between Oslo and Bergen in Norway is not accessible by road. The only way in is on foot/ski or by train. There are a number of cabins in the area and the owners typically get there by train.
I can’t find the title but there was a b&w comedy movie about a man and his daughter trying to keep a decrepit hotel at the end of an abandoned rail spur in business. Might have inspired Petticoat Junction. Name anyone?
It wasn’t accessible only by car, on many occasions on both Green Acres and Petticoat Junction you could see Oliver Douglas drive his car to the hotel. It was just the MAIN way to do it. To access it by car you’d drive off road.
The railroad functioned more like an interurban but was a full fledged railroad.
The railroad seemed to hit all the major points between from Pixley to Hooterville, including every farm and the school and the county seat court house and the Pixley Hospital.
The Shady Rest seemed to be allied with Hooterville, but it was between the two cities as Uncle Joe referred to having to compete with Pixley’s hotel for the business in the area.
It seemed to represent the formerly prosperous rural county that was dying in the 60s, typical and still going on today in places like the Dakotas, Iowa and Nebraska, among other states.
Bolding mine. I’m pretty sure they were wearing bras. I watched those three girls very closely when I was young, dreaming of what went on in that water tower.
Uncle Joe was a little creepy but fortunately he was moving kind of slow.
There was, for a number of years, a restaurant in the San Joaquin Delta south of Sacramento that was accessible only by boat. Apparently it closed a few years ago due the economic issues, but the owners hope to re-open it next year.
There are two small towns in Washington that are not accessable by roads. They are both on Lake Chelan, and you take a boat or hike to them. Naturally, they are resorts for outdoorspeople.
