Will Rogers Archway: The First Restaurant Over a Highway

The glass and steel structure you can see spanning the turnpike near Vinita opened in nineteen fifty-seven as a place called the Glass House. Conoco commissioned it as the first restaurant ever built directly over a public highway in the United States. Drivers could pull into a gas station on either side, walk up, and eat a meal while traffic passed beneath their feet.

For years it held the record as the world's largest McDonald's by floor space, a title it eventually lost to larger locations elsewhere. The turnpike it spans is the Will Rogers Turnpike, now Interstate forty-four, named for Oklahoma's beloved cowboy philosopher. The archway sits in Craig County, not far from Claremore where Rogers is buried, and has become a landmark for anyone tracing the old sixty-six corridor through northeastern Oklahoma.