The Starlite Motel in Mesa, Ariz. Video by Ash Ponders for The New York Times

The motel might seem like an ageless fixture of the American landscape, but in fact, this roadside mainstay didn’t exist before Dec. 12, 1925. That’s when Arthur and Alfred Heineman, two brothers with a successful Southern California architecture practice, opened the Milestone Mo-Tel, the first “motor hotel,” in San Luis Obispo, roughly halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. At the time, motorists had limited options. Their dust-covered clothes hardly suited the highbrow standards of most hotels, and parking in cities could be challenging. So many drivers stayed in autocamps, roadside resting places that sometimes offered basics like firewood and communal bathrooms, pitching tents off their running boards and cooking underneath the stars. In contrast, the brand-new Milestone featured novel comforts like hot showers and private garages. “There were orange trees in front of every door,” said Thomas Kessler, the executive director of the History Center of San Luis Obispo County, adding, “The idea of being able to reach out and pick an orange from out your window — you know, they talk about that in ‘The Grapes of Wrath.’ It’s such a concept of the American dream.” Like those trees, motels blossomed, giving a century’s worth of asphalt explorers a place to park their cars, lay their heads and contemplate what’s down the road, and fulfilling a promise perhaps best expressed in the words of those once-ubiquitous ads for Motel 6: “We’ll leave the light on for you.”

Hitting the Road The history of the motel begins with the automobile. The first official motel, the Milestone Mo-Tel (later renamed the Motel Inn) opened on Dec. 12, 1925, in San Luis Obispo, Calif. Alamy 1908 Ford introduces the Model T, a mass-produced car aimed at the middle class. A newly mobile nation suddenly needs better roads. 1916 President Woodrow Wilson signs the Federal Aid Road Act, laying the groundwork for a novel way to travel: the