Thornton – Every now and then, a guest arrives at the Gilcrest Motel who is more exuberant than others who check in.

“They’ll come in and say “You’re still here!” said Julie Piehn, who came to New Hampshire from Illinois with her husband, Gary, five years ago to purchase the motel.

“They’ll tell us that they used to come here 25 years ago, or on their honeymoon. We had one man tell us that he came with his grandparents 50 years ago and now he was here with his granddaughter.”

The Gilcrest Motel has been providing a place to stay for a night or an entire vacation since the 1940s. Its first accommodations were the eight cottages with charming fireplaces made from river stone taken from the Pemigewasset River that flows nearby. The cottages were joined by a motel sometime in the 1960s.

Once saturated roadside

In his book “Sleeping Alongside the Road,” author and Plymouth State University Professor Mark Okrant reports the Gilcrest was one of thousands of such properties that sprang up around the country as Americans got in their cars and went exploring after World War II. At the peak of the motel industry, in the mid-1960s, there were about 61,000 in the United States.

“Things are so different now because of the interstate,” said Okrant, who teaches geography and tourism and is the head of the Institute of New Hampshire Studies.

Reminiscences of the years when motels flourished, from about the 1930s until the mid-‘60s, are told in Okrant’s book through the recollections of motel owners and patrons past and present, who are identified only by their initials.

Okrant writes that it’s been estimated that up to 50 percent of “living Americans experienced motels firsthand while traveling throughout the country with family members or other loved ones between the end of World War II and the opening of the federal interstate highway system.”

The younger generations, he said, “have only experienced motels through the wonderful stories their parents and grandparents have shared.”

Even at its location on Route 3 in Thornton, a stone’s throw from where Interstate 93 provides a much faster way of travel, the Gilcrest carries on.

“People come back for various reasons,” says Gary Piehn. “They return for vacations, anniversaries, birthdays. It’s a nostalgic escape from the everyday.”

In the 40 years or so since the heyday of motels — a word that evolved from “motor” and “hotel” — many properties are a memory, and in some parts of New Hampshire, they were torn down to make way for condominiums and retail developments.

Still around

But along a 25-mile stretch of Route 3, which was the only north-south route from the top of the Granite State to Nashua, between Plymouth and Franconia Notch, there are more than two dozen motels that survived the interstate, as well as the motor courts that preceded the motel industry.

“Route 3 is a fabulous laboratory,” Okrant said, for his tourism students. “From Plymouth up to North Lincoln, there are 30 properties still existing.”

When the interstate pushed north, travelers could reach their destinations much faster than they could by heading north on Route 3. In the heart of the White Mountains, however, motels are still welcoming guests and that goes for the Franconia Notch area and beyond to Twin Mountain, Gorham and points north.

Okrant notes that in places where motels are located in the vicinity of attractions, they have carried on.

“Motels that do best are located in destinations, like the White Mountains and Weirs Beach, do well,” he said.

There are probably easier ways to make a living, but motel owners say entertaining guests is very rewarding.

“It’s fun to do — it’s a fun occupation,” said Ed O’Brien, a former newspaper pressman from Boston who bought the Franconia Notch Motel in 1983 and is thinking about retirement.

“The one thing I would really miss is talking to the people. They’ll get to telling you about their life and why they’re traveling.”

Survived change

O’Brien’s motel, and several others in Lincoln, survived the condominium boom in the ski resort town in the late 1980s. He concedes that he still “feels the bite” of that development.

The White Mountains have long attracted visitors. The first tourists traveled by rail and spent weeks at grand hotels, which flourished in the latter-1800s. Their popularity waned, and many were torn down or burned. As the automobile and the roads that carried them evolved, entrepreneurial farmers let travelers set up tents on their properties.

According to a 1930s brochure from the Indian Head resort in Lincoln, “the much rainy and chilly weather in the mountains of that season, we saw the need of some kind of inexpensive way of housing some of the people who were far from enjoying their tents with the chill and dampness.”

That, according to resort history, led to the development of what the owners called “overnight cabins.”

“This idea of overnight cabins has revolutionized the mode of tourist accommodations all over the country,” the brochure reads. “Thousands of people, many of the most wealthy, are giving up the expensive and formal hotel life for the overnight cabins . . . where they have all the conveniences, liberties and the privacy of a home.”

People still check into those overnight cabins at the Indian Head, says marketing manager Stu Weldon, as well as into the motel rooms that came later.

“Generations of families come year after year,” he said. “Shadow Lake is still there, and there is a generation of guests who remember when it was the swimming area.”

Second home

There are even guests, Weldon said, who return with their photo albums.

O’Brien and the Piehns count on those returning guests. A few times a week, Gary Piehn builds a fire and invites youngsters staying at the Gilcrest for toasted marshmallows.

“We try to cater to families by giving them something unique, especially the children,” he said. “This is a memory of their vacation.”

Along with returning guests, some of whom make reservations for their next vacation a year in advance for the same time and the same room or cabin, the motels count on the Internet and the travelers who hop on the information highway before departure.

“Somehow I got on the Lonely Planet Web site and that has brought in a lot of people,” O’Brien said, “especially Europeans.”

To make his motel even more attractive to foreign visitors, O’Brien offers a German version of his Web site and hopes to provide translations for his guests who come from France and the Netherlands.

The Piehns have also found success with an Internet presence, but once those guests get to the Gilcrest, they encourage a vacation from technology.

“There are no phones in the rooms and no Internet,” said Gary Piehn.

“We have a dataport (in the office) if someone absolutely has to check their e-mail. But we tell people ‘You’re on vacation — you need to leave that behind.’”

Few remain

Okrant reports there are only about 16,000 mom and pop motels remaining in the United States and there will probably never be a revival.

“The motel as a concept is passe,” he said. “You’ll see buildings where it will say ‘motel’ on the side, but the road sign says something like Joe’s Resort. I don’t foresee the day when motels come back in force, but there are people who still find those places attractive.”