The Billy Motel: Davis, WV
There was a time when a motel having a restaurant and even a bar was normal. As an amenity, it made good sense: The road-weary, hungry traveler was a captive customer, marooned for the night on an archipelago of brightly lit parking lots and exterior motel corridors along a lonely highway. Motels themselves exist/existed for convenience (and cost), and what’s more convenient than onsite dining?
This was deeply on my mind during a recent stay at the Billy Motel, which is that rarest of motels with a restaurant and bar attached. With some large part of Davis, WV shut down on Sundays and Mondays, I’d been living off pepperoni rolls from Mtn Top Convenience two miles down the road in Thomas.
While probably the best pepperoni rolls I’ve had from an establishment that’s not a fancy restaurant (tip of the cap to Mack’s Kitchen in Wardensville), I was craving something, anything else. Maybe a vegetable. I don’t know. The Billy Motel’s Ish Kitchen, with its inventive but somehow not currently online menu, a hodgepodge of global cuisines that reads more as curation than fusion, would have addressed that need perfectly. But, alas, it too was closed for the tourist-town version of a weekend. Back to Mtn Top I went, for the [redacted] pepperoni roll of my two-night stay in Davis.
At least the bar was open, if empty. It’s a cool place: KEXP on the radio; deep, gold banquettes lining one wall; brass lamps and dark hardwood on the bar; local beers on tap. For the greater Davis/Thomas metropolitan area (pop. roughly 1,000), it’s honestly punching way above its weight.
Motels in the year 2026 are either blah corporate chain affairs (Days Inn, Red Roof Inn, etc.) or relics. The Billy Motel is neither; it’s a stylish rehab, one of several in the eastern West Virginia panhandle. Consider the “Stay Hillbilly Fabulous” tagline; or the retro Playmate cooler-as-ice bucket (I think that’s what it’s for); or the mid-century modern molded plastic chairs that no human would possibly want to sit on for longer than five minutes at a time. It’s all very minimalist, to varying degrees of success.
I stayed at the Billy two nights in two different rooms. The first night was in the dog room, of which there is exactly one. The dog room is kind of depressingly spartan: very little art, no carpeting. There are some nice accents—flowers in vases (did not check realness, sorry), a glass water decanter, handmade soaps—but the effect is less cool-motel rehab than stripped-down old motel. Clean with a fresh coat of paint, sure, and also a comfortable bed and quality bedclothes (albeit on an exposed metal bed frame), but the effect is thin. It’s frustrating because it wouldn’t take much: an area rug and a couple of pictures on the wall.
I only spent the first night in the dog room because at two in the morning the minisplit began making a sound like a foghorn. Once a minute or so, there was a few-second blast right above my face. It was impossible to sleep and I thought I might have to finish the night in my car. The frequency of the blasts went down over time and I eventually fell asleep again, thank god, but it still woke me up a few more times.
Management sent a really nice guy to fix the unit in the afternoon, but it wasn’t to be. The minisplit was again honking in my ear at a rate of a few honks per minute. I texted management around six in the evening asking for, please, another room and they obliged, either forgetting that I had a dog or making an exception given that there is only one dog room at the Billy. There should be more than one dog room at the Billy.
Room number two was a big improvement and, again, it didn’t take much. With carpeting and a few pieces of art, the vibe came together in a way it hadn’t in the cursed dog room. The space actually felt worthy of the bar next door. (Also, I should note the Billy is refunding my first night unprompted.)
I want this place to succeed. Part of it is that I want the concept—the retro motel rehab—to succeed. But also, someone put a lot into the Billy, making a bet that Tucker County could support a bar and restaurant cut from city cloth, and a little motel with style. Next time, I hope there are actually some other people here.
On Monday night, I had a couple of beers in the bar. A guy, a real feller, came in to rent a room. Usually this isn’t a walk-in place. You book online and get a door code for your room, so check-in is self-service. But the guy had been passing through Davis and the Billy caught his attention.
That’s how it mostly worked in the motel age. Maybe you found a place in the AAA TourBook, but more likely it just stood out there on the side of the highway. A self-contained comfort oasis, beckoning. Nowadays, being a walk-in guest usually means tapping out a kayak.com reservation under the hotel portico at 11 at night.
What killed motels and motel restaurants were expressways, generally, and the Interstate Highway System in particular. Cars that once cruised surface highways lined by independent motels are now sucked forward at 75 or 80 miles per hour, exiting the freeway vacuum only at designated commerce locations that come pre-loaded with anonymous chain hotels and anonymous fast-food and fast-casual restaurants.
The state of West Virginia desperately wants to put an expressway, Corridor H, in the Billy’s backyard. It’s hard to say what exactly that could mean for the bar and motel. In Wardensville, an hour or so east of Davis, a promised Corridor H bypass is of great concern. The town, a beacon of rural West Virginia revitalization, could lose the road traffic it depends on to funnel customers into its restaurants and shops.
Beyond Wardensville, the old highways of the United States are littered with the corpses of mid-century motels. In the husks of abandoned gas stations along old highway 55, since replaced by Corridor H, you can see how quickly and mercilessly an expressway can crush a business. Say a prayer for the Billy.
-- michael byrne
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