As a free service, Route 66 preservationist Ed Klein often advises business owners on the Mother Road. He counsels them to think carefully about their goals for their historic buildings. “I always tell them [to think about]: What was the heyday of this place?” he says. “What was it that people were most excited about? … Can you make it a viable business?”

After Klein and his partner, Stephanie Cramer, purchased the few remaining buildings in Spencer, Missouri, in 2022, he had to answer these questions for himself. He’d had 15 years of volunteer work on Route 66 preservation projects—all outside of his full-time job—to ponder what it would be like to own a business on the route. On a 2008 road trip he first saw Spencer, about a half-hour drive outside Springfield, Missouri. “I pulled up and it was just the coolest set of buildings,” he says. “The roof was caved in. I thought, ‘We lost another one.’ What I didn’t know was that [new owners] had bought it the year before.”

Spencer was founded in 1868 along the road that became what is now historic Route 66. By the late 1920s, an enterprising Missourian named Sidney Casey had purchased 2 acres of the town’s land and built a general store, a service station, and another structure containing a barbershop and a diner. The buildings have been physically connected since 1928, but they maintain their own visual identities through different claddings of rock, stucco, and brick.

The businesses evolved and then closed in 1961, but the Casey family kept the little town center intact until selling it in 2007 to Francis and MaryLynn Ryan, who stabilized the structures. In 2022, Klein says, he learned through Facebook that the Ryans had put Spencer up for sale. “I told Stephanie, ‘That’s my favorite place. On the entire 2,500 miles of Route 66, that is my favorite place, and it’s for sale.’” A couple months later, Klein and Cramer signed the papers to become the new owners of Spencer.

Since then they’ve been steadily rehabilitating the row of buildings, which they call Spencer Station, taking the structures back to the way they looked in the 1930s and ’40s. Klein does most of the construction work, focusing on one project at a time. A recent effort entailed reinstalling pressed-tin ceilings in the diner, after which “my shoulders hate me,” he says. He’s currently restoring the rest of the diner’s interior.

Through its Preserve Route 66 Legacy Business Grant Fund, the National Trust provided grants for Spencer’s preservation in 2024 and 2025. Klein used one to redo the sidewalk in front of the buildings, making access easier and safer. The other went toward tuckpointing two walls of the general store, which the couple is turning into a museum and gift shop. In part, the museum will house memorabilia, photos, and documents already supplied by the Casey family and local residents.

Klein says the service station will become an event space in the future, and the diner will reopen. In response to popular demand, he and Cramer are also considering returning the barbershop to its original purpose. “More and more people are asking us to get a barber,” he says. The couple, who moved nearby after they purchased Spencer, also own a 1920s farmhouse next to the complex. They’re restoring and renovating the home and plan to use it as a vacation rental.

In addition to his passion for construction and preservation, Klein describes himself as “a car guy.” He’s purchased a 1947 Ford truck that he’s restoring and will keep parked outside the Spencer buildings on weekends. It will have plenty of company, as the town is a favorite meetup spot for classic-car enthusiasts. This year marks the centennial of not only Route 66, but also Spencer Station itself: Like the road out front, the general store was built in 1926. To honor both anniversaries, Klein and Cramer will host an October gathering they’re calling SpencerFest. It will include food, live music, and a car show, and they hope to make it an annual event.

Klein estimates that about 7,000 visitors have been inside Spencer Station during his four years of ownership. “We’ve had people from six continents and about 40 countries so far,” he says. Conversely, about half the visitors live within a 40-mile radius of the town.

No matter where people are from, if they visit while he’s working on the site, he’ll take the time to stop what he’s doing and engage. “If you become involved on the route, either as a volunteer … or as a business owner, you have to be an ambassador for the route—not only for your business,” Klein says. “Imagine going to Italy or France, and you find someone who owns a shop, and he’s talking to you for a half-hour about little gems you never knew about. You’ll never forget that.”