Before the age of automobiles, roadways outside American cities were mostly unpaved, usually packed dirt or gravel. But when the motor car arrived, it carried the clear message that existing roads must be improved and more should be built. A new organization, the Good Roads Movement, rallied support for better rural roads and highways, which they said would benefit farmers, postal service and travelers. In 1910, AAA (American Automobile Association), just eight years old, jumped up on the Good Roads Movement’s mission, bringing along a new class of leisure motorists.  

Politicians took notice and soon began allocating money to road building and maintenance. In 1929, a county road commissioner in Michigan set his snowplow operators on a new downtime task: constructing roadside picnic tables from scrap wood. These handy new amenities debuted in the spring, set out beside highways and were met with delight by weekend joyriders and serious travelers alike.

The publicly owned rest area was born.  

“When you tell people your area of study is highway rest areas, they look at you a bit puzzled, and there's typically a chuckle,” says historian Joanna Dowling, whose website RestAreaHistory.org offers invaluable insight into the history, design and charm of what she refers to as "the places we stop when we’re on our way to somewhere else." “But,” she says, “then someone starts to talk about a remembered road trip or family experience at a rest area and you can watch the conversation take on a life of its own. People connect to these places.” 

We’re talking about rest areas, not Buc-ees or Stuckeys or HoJos. No EV charging stations, Sheetz fried chicken combos, or South of the Border souvenirs—just those peaceful places by the side of the highway where you can enjoy some fresh air, walk the dog, use the bathroom, read a historical plaque and get back on the road without spending a dime or too much time.   

The first wayside rest areas were intended as a place to stretch your legs, maybe eat a meal brought from home and revive. They were purpose-built for simplicity and to ensure minimal upkeep, so they did not include niceties like bathrooms or running water. To keep these little oases from becoming recreational destinations, even barbecue grills were omitted, lest they encourage lingering or discourage travelers from driving through nearby towns for gas, food and services.  

Eventually, though, practical elements like open-sided shelters and trash cans found their way into highway rest areas. The overall vibe remained rustic and natural, sharing design elements like stone walls and rough-hewn log construction with national park buildings and avoiding alteration of or distraction from the existing terrain.  

During the Great Depression, Civilian Conservation Corps crews—responsible for much of the natural, “parkitecture” style of the national parks—also worked for state highway commissions. The Corps created rustic structures and posted historic markers at rest areas and roadside parks in Minnesota, Texas, Nevada, Arkansas and several other states.  

After a pause in highway building for World War II, nationwide projects accelerated during the prosperous postwar years under President Dwight D. Eisenhower.  

As a young Army officer, Eisenhower had taken part in the 62-day 1919 Transcontinental Motor Convoy from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco, traveling along roads he said “varied from average to non-existent.” Some parts, he said, were simply a “succession of dust, ruts, pits, and holes.”  His administration advocated for an expansion of roadways and passed the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, which created the Interstate Highway System.  

Unlike most state highways, the new interstates didn’t have intersections or points of entry other than designated on- and off-ramps, so drivers were strictly limited in where they could stop for services.  

The inclusion and placement of “safety rest areas” in interstate planning was of critical importance. Dowling explains, “The word ‘safety’ here is literally about safety. Drivers could no longer pull over in somebody’s private property or stop along the side of a high-speed roadway. People had come to expect a safe place to stop while they were traveling. And now that there were not a lot of exits, drivers were often driving for an extended period and needed a place to refresh themselves and take a break.”  

Providing a place to dispose of litter was not simply a matter of beautification: In California, legislators promoted rest area trash cans as a way to prevent forest fires. (Some less arid states actually supplied rest areas with barrels for burning trash!)  

During the late 1950s, the architecture of new rest areas retained the rustic timber-and-stone style that states had adopted before the war. Low-key structural design couldn’t detract from the natural beauty of their settings. Sites for new stops were chosen not just for their distance from the last or next rest area but also for their scenic interest or historic significance.  

By the 1960s, though, rest area designs got more adventurous. Because drivers might remain on the highway for extended stretches without exiting, they could possibly pass through an entire state without getting a sense of it. States began to experiment with rest area design as a means to share and enhance their impressions with motorists. Dowling reports that at professional highway conferences of the time, there were discussions on the value of rest areas as “state ambassadors.”  

A rest area presented states with the opportunity to educate people, and not simply through historical markers. If a state wanted to project the notion that it was modern and forward-thinking, elements cribbed from space-age midcentury modern designs proved useful. Soon newly constructed rest areas included curved concrete shapes, flat canopy roofs, breeze block walls and even whimsically scalloped, arched or pleated rooflines.  

Other states chose to emphasize (and even exaggerate) their historic or regional motifs to provide a context of place for travelers. Motorists could take breaks in the shade of stylized tipi or oil rigs, or thumb through travel brochures inside log-cabin-inspired structures. Throughout the Southwest, more traditional adobe buildings were adopted to replace the standard concrete-block rest areas.  

These days, a lot of states are opting for somewhat generic and functional designs when they open new rest areas or replace aging structures. Budget-wise, choosing a bland design that can be repeated over and over makes sense, along with some signage or a decorative mural about the region to differentiate the stops along the interstate.  

Dowling points to Texas as a standout example for maintaining, modernizing and updating its roadside facilities. The modern architecture of some safety rest areas in Texas honors regional farming with architectural elements that closely resemble windmills, silos and barns.  

South Dakota chose a single unifying element to tie together its rest areas along I-90. In the 1970s, nine 56’-tall sculptures were erected at the rest areas, each a circle of long concrete poles that leaned together to support each other, representing the tipi poles of Plains Indians. The sculptures originally stood outside rest area buildings designed to resemble the region’s sod houses and dugouts, but those structures and some of the tipis, have since been removed during subsequent renovations and expansions.     

Over the past decade, Iowa has updated its rest areas to celebrate the state’s history and cultural contributions. A Cedar Rapids stop, for example, honors artist Grant Wood in design (among other elements, the farmer and his daughter depicted in Grant’s famous American Gothic are used to indicate men’s and women’s bathrooms). Other Iowa rest areas are devoted to the state’s role in the Underground Railroad as well as Lewis and Clark’s journey through the state. 

Along New Jersey’s turnpike and highways, the Garden State honors its celebrity residents and natives by naming rest areas after them. The roadside stars include Whitney Houston, James Gandolfini Jon Bon Jovi, Frank Sinatra, Walt Whitman, Connie Chung and Celia Cruz. The famous names are prominently displayed and sometimes accompanied by an exhibit and some photos. 

The open spaces and natural settings around rest areas are prime real estate for public art so they’re often used as open-air galleries for sculpture—some serious, some playful. Sixteen marble and concrete sculptures by international artists were installed outside Vermont rest areas during the early 1970s, an ambitious project curated by a Vermont art professor, Paul Aschenbach.

In the run-up to the 1976 bicentennial of the United States, the state of Nebraska commissioned eight abstract modern sculptures to place at rest areas along the state’s 500-mile stretch of Interstate 80. In 1993, a Las Cruces, New Mexico rest area parked a 40’-long sculpture of a roadrunner made from recycled materials by a local artist. Colorado contemporary artist Bradford Rhea carves fanciful sculptures out of local cottonwood trees, a sizable collection of which are on display around the rest area in Sterling, Colorado.  

The last 20 years has seen a sometimes-contentious debate over whether and how to monetize rest areas. State governments can see their upkeep as a drain on budgets, so many rest areas have been boarded up, their exits blocked by barriers. Because the 1956 federal legislation that created the interstate highway system barred rest areas from providing commercial services like food or fuel—except along already existing tollroads and highways where these businesses were grandfathered in—state treasurers jealously watch the money being spent on food and gas at off-highway convenience stores like Bucc-ees and Wawa.

The opposition voices ask what would happen to picnic shelters, quiet paths, play areas and mosaic maps of rest areas if the law were changed and fast food, kitschy shops and gas stations were allowed to open. Those businesses thrive on their branded consistency, so much of the charming local character found at rest areas would be lost to flashy brand signage, colors and logos.

The other loss is more abstract: It’s hard to imagine any distinctive family road trip memories being formed when all the rest areas feel the same.