Howard Johnson's

The last Howard Johnson's restaurant closed in Lake George, New York in 2022. A single location. When you're down to one restaurant, it's essentially over. But the fact that it lasted until 2022 is remarkable — the business had been in slow decline for forty years.

Howard Deering Johnson built a roadside-restaurant empire from a single Massachusetts soda fountain starting in 1925. By mid-century, its orange-roofed restaurants and motor lodges lined America's new highways. "HoJo's" was famous for its "28 flavors" of ice cream, fried clams (a signature dish), and a dependable family menu for travelers. The orange roof became as iconic as the food — you could see it from the highway and know you had a place to stop and eat. The brand was built on reliability and consistency.

The motor lodges were part of the genius. The company understood that the interstate era meant families traveling long distances needed places to stop for food and sleep. You needed a place to pull off the highway, rest, eat, sleep, and continue. Howard Johnson's provided both, with reliable quality and distinctive branding. The orange roof said: standardized, predictable, safe. For 1950s and 1960s families, that was exactly what highway travel meant.

But the interstate era that built the chain eventually passed it by. Younger families wanted different restaurant concepts. Fast-food chains like McDonald's figured out how to undercut Howard Johnson's on price and speed. Hotel chains separated from restaurants — Holiday Inn and others became the standard motel brands. Howard Johnson's couldn't compete on either front. The restaurants dwindled for decades. The brand survived as a hotel name under Wyndham ownership, but the restaurant became irrelevant.

That final Lake George location was kept open largely by local sentiment and an owner who wouldn't give up. When it finally closed, it was the end of an era. The orange roof and fried clams are memories now. The motor lodge concept evolved into Motel 6 and budget chains. Howard Johnson's represented a specific era of American travel: the family road trip, the roadside restaurant, the predictable motel. When that era ended, so did Howard Johnson's.