The answer to this one was so obvious we weren’t quite ready to believe it. As the Nevada State Museum’s Dennis McBride points out, there is a Motel 6 at 195 E. Tropicana Ave., next to the Hooters casino-hotel. "It was there in 1989 and before," McBride writes, "and it’s still there."
But that seemed too easy. Besides, it’s two blocks off the Strip. We pressed our questioner for more details of his late-'80s' stay and learned this: "The only thing I could possibly add was the Motel 6 sign was a huge neon sign that flickered as the Stardust hotel [sign] did."
Armed with that recollection, we paid a visit to the official Motel 6 site. Lo and behold, there was an online video of a neon sign matching the description. It was a real Occam’s Razor moment.
However, in the roundabout process that led us to this conclusion, we considered and eventually dismissed several other candidates. There’s another Motel 6, at 5085 S. Dean Martin Drive, behind Excalibur on the far side of I-15. The property was bought by All Star Inns in March 1987 and there’s no mention in Clark County records of Motel 6 until 2001. Besides, its sign is small and nothing like the Stardust’s, so it could safely be ruled out.
Then there was a Motel 8, which didn’t fit the description either. It looks like it’s seen better days, probably back in the Sixties, when it was the Croyden Arms, just a stone’s throw from the Hacienda.
A fourth candidate was nominated by both Deke Castleman and former KLAS-TV news director Bob Stoldal. They recalled one of the Strip’s last lamented "grind" joints, the Klondike. Stoldal even dug up a Las Vegas Review-Journal story that traced the Klondike's history "back to 1962 when it opened as a Motel 6. Its location at the edge of town on then-U.S. Highway 91 made it a popular stopping point for tourists driving in from California."
This got us sufficiently curious to ring up former Klondike owner John Woodrum, who brought the story up to date. The motel was built by a certain Sam Calabrese, he said, then leased to Motel 6. "I think they went bankrupt," offers Woodrum, who adds that the place then passed to Ralph Engelstad and John Bingle. (Clark County records show the title being made over to Ralph and Betty Englestad in October 1975.)
"Engelstad had a fetish for the Oriental-type look," recalls Woodrum, and had rechristened the Motel 6 as the Kona Kai Inn. "It was overtly Hawaiian [in] theme, with the roofs and all that."
For whatever reason, Engelstad didn’t hang onto the property for long, which is where Woodrum comes into the picture, in 1976. "I sold it for Ralph to this friend of mine in Hawaii," Katsumi Kazama, who took Woodrum on as a partner. "It had gone through some tough times and there was a lot of bad feeling," prompting Woodrum to expunge the bad karma with a change of title and theme. Thanks to a defaulted loan, Woodrum found himself with rights to the "Klondike" brand and, one name change and a few coats of red paint later, a South Strip icon was born.
For the next three decades, the Klondike kept on keeping on, until escalating land values prompted the Kazamas to sell the land to a Florida developer. A condo-hotel and casino were planned for the site, which was quietly razed earlier this year. However, economic adversity led to the scrapping of the project, too, and the acreage is back on the market, leaving only an empty concrete pad where the Motel 6 had once planted its flag, 46 years ago.
