---
name: "Koolwink Motel"
subtitle: "Roadside Americana nobody ever renovated away"
date: 2026-08-04
link: "https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/koolwink-motel"
linkText: "atlasobscura.com"
source: "Atlas Obscura"
topics: [travel-and-places, history-and-archives]
tags: [motel, west-virginia, route-50, retro]
description: "A 1936 tourist home on US Route 50 in Romney, West Virginia, kept rather than replaced by the couple who bought it in 1955."
---

It opened in 1936 as the Koolwink Tourist Home, renting rooms in a family house and a pair of cottages to motorists on what is now US Route 50. When Wallace and Pauline Mauk bought it in 1955, they did the unfashionable thing and kept it. Romney, West Virginia has had a retro motel for ninety years without ever needing to call itself one.
