Notes:

6P43+W4 Springfield, Springfield Township, MO

NW corner w/ S. Main Ave.

“Missouri’s oldest greasy spoon diner, famous for their chili.” Also said to be “the oldest diner on Route 66”, which may be hard to disprove, given that that makes it seventeen years older than the history Mother Road itself. (And thirty years older than the famous ghost of the same name, whose image can be spotted inside.) And they’re still using their original Garland stove. It was not always in a Quonset hut, however, and the Quonset hut was not always where it is now. Casper Lederer sold fruit and chili out of a building further east on Walnut Street, west of the Landers Theatre, growing the business into a restaurant which moved around WW2 into the Quonset hut at Cherokee Street and Glenstone Avenue. Lederer’s son Charlie took over in 1966, and Belinda Harriman began working there in the 1970s. She and her husband Dan bought the business in 1985 when Casper died, and moved the hut to its present location. SMSU frat brothers Trevor Crist and Shawn Kraft bought it in 2013.

Links:

• Casper's (Facebook)