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The automobile changed the tourist experience in a fundamental way. Railroad
travel was regimented by schedules, and vacationers were tied to a location
once they arrived. The car brought true mobility to vacationers and allowed
for shorter stays and more frequent travel.
The accommodations necessary to provide gas, food and lodging for the auto
tourist changed the physical face of the Dells. The auto tourist forsook the
urban hotels for the more inexpensive and flexible accommodations that motels
offered. Gas stations and restaurants sprang up on the periphery of town,
leading to the development of the commercial "strip" that today
is the most distinctive built landscape of the Dells.
Auto-related architecture is necessarily flashy, as bold in its own way as
the craggy bluffs of the Dells.
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