…Gone, I’m afraid.  It’ll be very hard for the venerable place to recover from this blow.

A trucker, apparently thinking it was a drive-in, did just that a few days before Christmas last year and embedded his rig in the building.  The truck went so deep into the first floor that when they pulled it out most of the building collapsed.

Here’s what it looked like before the truck hit it:

And here it is a week ago:

On shaky ground for a long while—the restaurant has been closed for about a year—the building had recently been donated to the local historical society, which was in the process of figuring out what to do with it.

I suspect that truck driver has now made their decision for them.  It doesn’t make me happy.  I am sure it’ll be replaced by a far less interesting eatery, probably a huge truck stop.

As a funky and mellow stopping place at the nicely rural crossroads of well-traveled routes in east-central Florida, it has always figured into most of my travels around the state.  For some previous blog posts about the place, go here and here.

Built in the 1920s, it ended up on the National Register of Historic Places not because of anything particularly unique about the building as a structure but because its presence spanned two key historical periods in Florida history.

Its location, now called Yeehaw Junction, was the juncture of two dirt tracks far back in the 1880s and the area became a hub of sorts for the wild cattle industry later in the century.  Moving into the 1900s, it became the site of a cattle depot, trading post, and, later, gas station/motel/restaurant called the Desert Inn.

This is from the paperwork that lead to the historical designation in 1994:  “The evolution of the Desert Inn coincides with the transition of the Florida cattle industry from a traditionally transient open range occupation to modern ranching operations, and with the early development of the state’s modern, transient tourist industry based on automotive transportation.  It reflects, in other words, the final stage of Florida’s long frontier history and the short twentieth century prelude to the space age.”

It’s a bit sad for me because it is another of those nice country places that are disappearing all over the place.  If you’re looking for someplace to stop up that way, however, there is still Griffis Café, a few miles up 441 in Kenansville.

Some more photos: