But many diners got their start in the middle of the country when a man named Arthur Valentine created the Valentine Lunch System and opened a chain of diners that were built in sections by the Metal Building Company of Wichita.
Valentine saw opportunity ahead, and began marketing the buildings to others who saw a realization of a dream of owning their own business. However, timing was not on Valentine’s side, because after constructing only a few buildings the advent of World War II made it impossible to acquire the necessary materials. Arthur Valentine had to wait until the war was over to continue his enterprise, which took off with the post-war building boom. By 1948 Valentine diners had found homes in 38 states, with many in the heartland and along the heavily travelled Route 66.
The forerunner of the diner was a movable feast called the lunch wagon, invented in the 1870s. The next step was a more permanent housing, often adapted from obsolete horse drawn streetcars or old railroad cars. Though the term ‘diner’ derived from the railroad ‘dining car’, Valentine diners could best be described as small boxes. The square-sided structures were designed to be moved on flatbed trucks, then quickly assembled at their new locations. The interior consisted of a row of eight to ten stools placed around a counter, behind which was the food preparation work space. An original Valentine did not include booth space, but after Arthur Valentine’s death in 1954, the company was sold to new owners and later models accommodated the addition of a couple of booths and even a drive-up or walk-up window. The end of the Valentine era was signaled in the 1960s, when burger chains and urban growth began to compete with the small-town, mom-and-pop operation style of the little diners. By 1975 the company and the concept were gone for good.
However, there is a resurging interest in Valentine diners from the Kansas Historical Society and the American Diner Museum in Providence, Rhode Island. As a result, existing Valentine diners are being tracked down across the country. In the High Plains Public Radio broadcast area there are several buildings that are still serving the public, including St. John, Dighton, Meade. Liberal’s diner was relocated to the grounds of Dorothy’s House and Land of OZ. Towns that once sported a Valentine diner that is no longer in service include Tribune and Garden City, Kansas; Springfield, Colorado; and Shamrock, Texas.
However, the diner once located in Shamrock lives again in Clinton, Oklahoma. It opened in Shamrock in 1956 and was called the Porter House Café. The Porter family operated it until 1964. Almost 40 years later, in 2002, the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum acquired the building and painstakingly restored it from a rusted metal box into an authentic representation of a Valentine in the days when diners were king. It sits in shining splendor on the Route 66 Museum grounds at Clinton, and is well worth a look if you’re in the area or on the internet.
Thanks to the Kansas Historical Society for providing information used in the writing of this story. For High Plains Public Radio, I’m Lynn Boitano.
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High Plains History is a production of High Plains Public Radio.
