In the late 1940s and 1950s the Pinewood was known as a good motel in the Vicksburg area, a tourist court riding on the travel boom following World War II.

Others of the era had names that some older residents will equally remember, the Joanna on North Washington Street and the Riverview, Plaza, Dixiana and the Magnolia on South Washington. Today only the Dixiana and a part of the Plaza still function. At the Pinewood and Joanna, only the remnants remain, the rest having fallen to wrecking balls and progress.

The Joanna property was bought by the National Park Service and will be demolished to improve the appearance of the adjacent National Cemetery.

“My mother and father bought the first few acres in 1939,” said Gay Strong, who owns the Pinewood property on U.S. 80.

At that time, U.S. 80 was the main all-weather, east-west highway from Savannah, Ga., to San Diego. When Richard and Mary Jo Cassino Strong first bought the land from the Dees family, a small grocery occupied the property.

“Dad named it the Parkway Inn,” Strong said.

Though busy before, the highway really became heavily traveled during World War II with convoys of military trucks rumbling through. After the war, the traffic scarcely diminished as more people bought automobiles and personal travel took off.

In 1940 and 1941, the Strongs built the first eight motel units on the east end of the property adjacent to the building that housed the restaurant. In the 1950s, they built the 14 units on the west end of the property.

“The restaurant was originally called the Pinewood Gardens,” Strong said. “I guess because we had so many flowers planted around it.”

Later the popular eatery was called the Pinewood Grill. The original restaurant building burned in 1950.

Strong said Mike Guido and Marie Angelo operated the restaurant after the Strongs, and Gay Strong’s uncle Frank Cassino took it over after the 1953 tornado destroyed his Vicksburg Candy Co. Cassino moved his restaurant to Openwood and Jackson street in the 1960s.

“When we first started it, I guess you would call it a family affair,” Strong said. “It was Mama and Daddy and me.”

She said the cooks were from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers fleet.

“We had fresh eggs. We grew our own vegetables,” she said.

The intestate highways began being built in this area in the late ’50s and early ’60s, and that wrote the death warrants for the Pinewood and many other motels and restaurants along the old U.S. highway system.

By the 1970s, the Strongs could see the end coming. They tried to stave it off by renting the old motel rooms, which had kitchens, as efficiency apartments, to construction workers by the week and month.

The end finally came and they closed the Pinewood in late 1979.

“The (interstate) highway killed it off,” Strong said, noting a lake up the hill from the old motel and restaurant property and any perceived danger of its dam breaking had nothing to do with the decision to close down.

Strong recalled one incident of particular note from the history of the Pinewood.

Her mother rented a couple of rooms to some men at an odd time of day, the middle of the day.

“She had heard there were some convicts who had escaped from somewhere,” Strong said. “Being the detective she was, she went in the rooms after they left and checked the stuff in the trash before she called the FBI.”

Apparently, Strong said, the law enforcement officers received enough information that the men were recaptured not long after.

During World War II, the military convoys sometime stopped at the Pinewood for cold drinks and the barbecue for which the restaurant had grown a reputation. And it was free to the troops.

During the war, fliers from Holland were trained in Jackson.

“I don’t know why they came over to Vicksburg,” Strong said, “but they always stopped here on their way back.”

Today, Strong has no plans to repair or remodel the old motel and has the property listed for sale.