Motel Row was a busy place, 51 years ago

In 1967, the best known hotel in La Crosse was the Stoddard downtown, but motels were all over the place…like the Holiday Inn on the pike, and others on Rose Street, greeting visitors coming from the north end.  On the far south side of town, Highway 14…Mormon Coulee Road…was known as Motel Row.  Among the lodging places you could find south of Ward Avenue in ’67 were the Redwood, the Wishing Well, the Welch and Bluffview, Vick’s, and the New Pines.  Many of those motels are still there today.
 
La Crosse State was preparing to take people on tours of the kitchens at its new dining hall, Whitney Center.  Whitney had four upstairs dining rooms, and two activity rooms in the lower level.  Today, much of the basement is occupied by the local studios for Wisconsin Public Radio.  
 
During one week of ’67, the most popular songs to be heard on radio in the Coulee Region included “A Whiter Shade of Pale” by Procol Harum…”Light My Fire” by the Doors…Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe”…and the #1 song, “Little Old Wine Drinker Me” by Dean Martin.  Fifty-one years ago, 1967, yesterday in La Crosse.