Air-Wood Motel on U.S. 40

To close out the week, here's another vintage motel with a great sign, although it was pretty far from Lorain County. It’s the Air-Wood Motel, located on U.S. 40 about 5 miles east of Zanesville, near the I-70 Airport Interchange. I shot the photograph above during a road trip my younger brother and I took on the National Road in the 1990s.

Here's an undated vintage postcard of the Air-Wood (below), courtesy of the CardCow website, in which you can see the distinctive plane-shaped sign in colore.

The back of the postcard describes the motel’s amenities: 14 quiet, clean and comfortable units, as well as free T.V.

A newer postcard (below) seems to downplay the motel in favor of the gift shop both in the photograph and text. After mentioning the motel, the postcard’s mail panel side reads, “Largest Candle and Candle Accessories display in Ohio. Local made Pottery, Glass, and Cement Statuary.”

By the time my brother and I were driving by the motel in the 1990s, it appears that candles and pottery had been shelved in favor of salami and lottery tickets.

Sadly, like the other motels I wrote about this week, the Air-Wood Motel is gone, with only its parking lot (below) left to mark the spot.

I guess all over Ohio, the old mom-and-pop motels, tourist camps and cottages that catered to travelers along the once-congested federal highways are finally beginning to disappear. It’s not necessarily a good or bad thing – just a reminder that time is marching on and nothing lasts forever.