The Mystery Of The Gobbler Motel

March 24, 2005 at 11:41 AM | by markj | 0 Comments

A recent Fark Forum asked: "What happened to the Gobbler?"

This much we know: Sometime in the late 1960s, on the outskirts of Madison Wisconsin, off 1-94, a crazy developer named Hartwig owned a bunch of land on, and around, a hill. He dreamed of building a motel.

On this land an equally insane designer named Helmut Ajango designed the Gobbler Motel Restaurant. A creation, that legend has it when viewed from the sky, looked just like a turkey.

Their joint creation was Logan's Run meets Austin Powers, no doubt these two men were light years ahead of their time. The Gobbler was a 70s era utopia, complete with clamshell phone booths, a rotating bar, king size water beds with built in televisions, shag carpeting, passion pits, hot tubs. If you could dream it up, you could find it at the Gobbler.

Read On To Find Out What Happened To The Gobbler

As default Gobbler historian James Lileks:

It really is the place preferred by nine out of ten tall guys with high flat asses and their pink-jumpsuited wives.

Like any empire the Gobbler had a beginning, a high point, and an end. In the beginning it was just a crazy developers dream, during its height we are guessing the Gobbler was the destination of choice for depraved midwestern couples, but the end is what we know the most about.

After Hartwig's death in 1979 the Gobbler began its precipitous decline. Motel ownership changed hands, and suddenly the Gobbler closed and the restaurant became "John-Joh's Rib House." A few years later the Gobbler reopened as "King Aurthur's Inn."

Sadly, the Gobbler never did recapture its 70s magic, and eventually the Inn was abandoned, while the restaurant kept skating by, changing ownership more than five times along the way, the Gobbler magic was fading.

In 2002, a blogger's impromptu pilgrimage to the Gobbler ended in tragedy, when the blogger was greeted not by the giant Gobbler Motel, but instead by the charred rubble of what was once the Gobbler:

What awaited us in the gusting, frigid wind was a blackened hole surrounded by slushy snow, partially filled with architectural wreckage. They burned it down! The air still had a smell of charred plastic, burnt wood and insulation.

Is it just us or does this sound a lot like when Luke Skywalker returned to his moisture farm home on Tatooine only to find the whole thing burned to a crisp.

According to the Johnson Creek planning department, the Johnson Creek fire department burnt down the Gobbler.

Alas, no longer can you view the image of a giant turkey as you fly over the site, and no longer can you peer in the windows for a glimpse the passion pit, or the shag carpet.

The latest word? Some auto dealership is using the Gobbler land for overflow parking. The restaurant, is, as far as we know, still standing. If you have any more information to add to the Gobbler mystery, please do so in the comments area, or send it to us.

Related Stories:
·   The Gobbler [Lileks]
·   Gobbler Motel [gobblermotel.blogspot.com]
·   Seven Star Hotel Forum [Fark]

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