Building The Diamonds - From a Roadside Stand to a Route 66 Legend, the Story of The Diamonds

The Diamonds Restaurant along Route 66 near Villa Ridge, Missouri, during the 1950s. A packed parking lot, the restaurant’s distinctive curved facade and its towering diamond-shaped sign illustrate the popularity of the landmark during the heyday of the Mother Road. Postcard from the collection of Jeremy P. Ämick.

An aerial postcard view of The Diamonds Restaurant and Cabins at the junction of U.S. highways 50, 66 and 100 near Villa Ridge. The image captures the remarkable scale of the roadside complex, with the restaurant, tourist cabins, parking areas and buses serving travelers during the height of automobile tourism. Postcard from the collection of Jeremy P. Amick.

Editor’s Note: This is the first of two companion articles exploring neighboring landmarks along historic Route 66 in Franklin County, Missouri. This installment traces the story of The Diamonds, while the second examines the nearby Gardenway Motel and the roadside era these businesses shared.
           
In the years before interstate highways carried travelers across Missouri at 70 miles per hour, a Franklin County farmer, Spencer Irwin Groff, discovered there was money to be made from the people passing by his property.
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What began as a humble roadside stand near Villa Ridge eventually became The Diamonds, one of the most celebrated restaurants along Route 66 and a place that would serve more than a million customers a year. Its story, however, began not with neon lights, tour buses or a sprawling restaurant, but with produce gathered from the Missouri countryside.

Groff was born Oct. 17, 1883, at Villa Ridge, the son of Morgan and Rebecca Coleman Groff. He spent virtually his entire life in the community, farming land near the crossroads that would eventually become one of the busiest highway intersections in the region.

The Missouri Route 66 historic survey traces the beginnings of Groff's roadside enterprise to 1923, when financial difficulties on the family farm prompted him to sell produce to passing motorists. The first effort was modest, essentially a roadside stand, but the proceeds were reinvested into something much more expansive.

A later account of Groff's life preserved an especially vivid detail about those beginnings. Some of the first merchandise consisted of persimmons picked in the nearby woods by his sister, Ursula. The operation grew while Groff sold hot dogs, sandwiches, soda, fruits and vegetables and cold buttermilk. He installed a gasoline tank for motorists. Groff’s primitive roadside operation was as colorful as its name.

A 1972 St. Clair Chronicle account recalled that he fashioned an early shelter by mounting the wooden roof of an old silo on posts. He sold gasoline along with hot dogs cooked on a kerosene grill, sandwiches, fruit and vegetables. Groff reportedly called the place Altamont Park, after the school he had attended, but travelers gave it another name. Somehow, the little roadside operation became known as the Banana Stand, and the nickname stuck.

Then came the highway that changed everything. Groff's property occupied an enviable location at the intersection of the old Springfield Road and another important road leading through the region. With the development of the federal highway system, the crossroads became part of the Route 66 corridor.

Groff eventually stepped out in front of his gas station and laid out a diamond-shaped form for a restaurant. The unusual design was dictated by the Y-shaped wedge of land between the roads, but it also supplied the new establishment with its memorable name. On July 3, 1927, the day the new road opened, The Diamonds opened for business.

Period postcards advertised The Diamonds as “the old reliable eating place.” The restaurant operated 24 hours a day, serving the growing stream of motorists, truck drivers and bus passengers traveling the highway.

The operation expanded well beyond a restaurant. Twenty-five tourist cottages were constructed behind it, along with a swimming pool and first-aid station. The roadside stand that had begun with produce was becoming a travel complex. And beside Spencer throughout much of that rise was Ursula Groff.

Ursula was not simply Spencer's sister. She had been a piano teacher in St. Louis and Franklin County before joining her brother in the business. At The Diamonds, she became closely associated with the kitchen and the food that helped establish the restaurant's reputation.

When Ursula died in 1958, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat looked back on her role in the restaurant's creation. In its Feb. 14, 1958, account of her funeral, the newspaper reported that Ursula had joined Spencer about 40 years earlier in establishing what became The Diamonds. The newspaper credited much of the restaurant's reputation to Ursula, stating that its fame was due in large measure to her “home cooking,” particularly her pies.
         
The Diamonds quickly became a Franklin County institution. On April 3, 1936, the Meramec Valley Transcript reported that students from Washington, Sullivan and New Haven were scheduled to participate in a radio broadcast from station KWK in St. Louis. Before traveling to the studio, the students would be entertained at The Diamonds with an 8 a.m. breakfast “as guests of Spencer Groff.”

Among the young people who found work at The Diamonds was Louis B. Eckelkamp. His rise became one of the remarkable success stories associated with the restaurant. Eckelkamp later recalled that when he first approached Spencer Groff looking for work, he owned only a pair of broken-down shoes and had 25 cents in his pocket.

Groff hired him as a dishwasher and cleanup boy. From that modest beginning, Eckelkamp rose through the operation, eventually becoming assistant manager and general manager. Noble Key, another longtime employee, managed the night operation. By the mid-1930s, Eckelkamp was no longer simply an employee.

A later account of Groff's life reported that The Diamonds was incorporated in 1935 with Eckelkamp becoming a part-owner. Three years later, surviving business records show that Eckelkamp and Key assumed controlling interests in the restaurant.

A Missouri registration of fictitious name filed Aug. 18, 1938, identifies the business as The Diamonds, operating at the junction of U.S. highways 50 and 66 at Gray Summit. It lists Louis B. Eckelkamp with a 70 percent interest and Noble Key with a 30 percent interest.

Another remarkable surviving document, minutes of a special stockholders meeting dated Aug. 3, 1938, records an agreement involving the use of the name The Diamonds. Most importantly, the document bears the signatures of Spencer Groff, Ursula Groff, Louis B. Eckelkamp and Noble Key.

Groff appears to have retained ownership interests connected with the real estate even as Eckelkamp and Key took control of the restaurant business. The distinction would become important years later, when litigation involving Eckelkamp, The Diamonds Inc. and Groff's estate reached the Missouri Court of Appeals.

Eckelkamp later recalled that owning The Diamonds had been an ambition almost from the time he began working there.

“I made up my mind to buy the Diamonds someday shortly after I started working here eight years ago,” Eckelkamp said, according to a historical account reproduced by Lost Tables.

The young dishwasher had become one of the men running one of Route 66's best-known restaurants.

Eckelkamp's rise eventually attracted attention far beyond Franklin County. In December 1948, the Washington Missourian reported that the Louis B. Eckelkamp family had been selected by a New York advertising agency as a “typical midwestern family” for a national advertising campaign. Photographs of the family were scheduled to appear in such major magazines as Time, Life, The Saturday Evening Post, Newsweek and Look.

In researching the family, the agency questioned Eckelkamp about his beginnings at The Diamonds and his eventual management and ownership of the restaurant. The story was an extraordinary turn for a man who had arrived at the roadside establishment years earlier looking for work.

By the late 1940s, The Diamonds had grown to proportions Spencer Groff could scarcely have imagined when he began selling produce along the road. Then, on Feb. 26, 1948, disaster struck.
The Belle Banner announced it across the top of an article with a blunt headline: “THE DIAMONDS BURN.” Beneath it was an equally striking subheadline: “Fire Early Today Destroys Nationally Known Cafe.”

The Diamonds, now described as a “nationally known highway rest stop,” had reportedly burned to the ground early that morning. The loss was initially estimated at more than $100,000.

According to the Belle Banner, the fire reportedly began because of defective wiring in a refrigeration unit and spread rapidly through the frame building. The heat became so intense that traffic was halted in both directions on Highway 66. 

One of the most interesting lines in the newspaper's account was its description of how the sprawling roadside business had begun: “Spencer Groff started the business with a peanut stand years ago.”

Accounts may have varied regarding whether the original operation was a fruit stand, Banana Stand or peanut stand, but the newspaper's point was unmistakable. What had started on an almost impossibly small scale had grown into a nationally known business.

The Belle Banner added an astonishing measure of that growth, noting, “Last year more than a million customers were served there.”

The fire may have destroyed the building, but it had not destroyed The Diamonds. The restaurant rose again, this time on a far grander scale. The replacement building embraced the streamlined architectural style associated with the automobile age. The rebuilt complex reportedly cost more than $350,000, with a grand opening held July 10, 1949. It contained a 300-seat restaurant, coffee shop, cafeteria, curio shop, drive-in cafe, bus-ticket office, travel bureau, popcorn stand and filling station.

The Diamonds promoted itself as the “World's Largest Roadside Restaurant.” It was a classic Route 66 attraction, being part restaurant, part service station, part tourist attraction and part advertisement. And behind all of it remained the unlikely story of a Franklin County farmer and his sister.

Ursula Groff died in February 1958 at age 76 after suffering a broken hip in a fall. The Feb. 14, 1958, St. Louis Globe-Democrat described her as “a descendant of the pioneer Groff and Coleman families of Franklin County.”

Her funeral was held at Brush Creek Baptist Church at Gray Summit, with burial in historic Brush Creek Cemetery. 

The newspaper's obituary recalled the roadside produce stand and explained that after U.S. Highway 66 was built in 1927, the business became known “from coast to coast as a stopping place for interstate trucks and busses.”

And it made sure Ursula received credit. While Spencer handled the business end of the operation, the Globe-Democrat reported, “Miss Groff presided over the kitchen.”

Spencer lived another four years. On Nov. 8, 1962, the St. Clair Chronicle reported his death under the headline: “Spencer Groff Has Death Collapse.” The newspaper described the 79-year-old as a “well known farmer and financier of Gray Summit.”

Groff had gone to the home of neighbors as a supper guest on Saturday, Nov. 3, when he suddenly collapsed. His death was believed to have resulted from a heart attack and was officially attributed to natural causes.

The Chronicle noted that Groff had “spent his entire lifetime in the Gray Summit area” and lived on a farm near The Diamonds. 

A separate Nov. 8 obituary in the Meramec Valley Transcript likewise recorded that Spencer was born at Villa Ridge on Oct. 17, 1883, had spent his entire life in the community and had been engaged in farming. But another contemporary remembrance provided perhaps the most fitting epitaph for the roadside entrepreneur. The account noted that Groff “built the original building at the Diamonds Restaurant” and recalled that Henry Feldmiller helped him construct the first stand, described as a “3-cornered outside road stand.”

It also returned to that wonderful detail from the earliest days: among the first things offered for sale were persimmons picked in the woods by Ursula.

Spencer, like his sister, was laid to rest in Brush Creek Cemetery, only a short distance from the highway landmark they had helped create.

As the modern divided highway and Interstate 44 redirected traffic away from the old Route 66 alignment, the location that had once been The Diamonds' greatest advantage became its greatest liability. Louis Eckelkamp put the problem into memorable words when discussing a newer highway that carried motorists only hundreds of feet away from the restaurant.

“It might as well be nine miles,” he said.

For a roadside business, being visible was not enough. Motorists had to be able to reach it. The original Diamonds eventually closed at Villa Ridge. The famous sign and restaurant operation were moved east to a new location near the interstate at Gray Summit, while the old building later became home to the Tri-County Truck Stop.

But the relocation of The Diamonds was not an isolated development. Nearby stood another major roadside enterprise associated with Louis Eckelkamp, the Gardenway Motel.

The Gardenway and the later Diamonds represented the next generation of Missouri highway tourism, built not around the road Spencer Groff had watched develop in the 1920s, but around the interstate age that replaced it.

And that is where the second part of the story of Missouri roadside icons begins.
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Jeremy P. Ämick is author of the new historical compilation “Voices of the Moreau.”  

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The former Diamonds Restaurant as it appeared along old Route 66 near Villa Ridge on Sept. 5, 2026. The once-bustling roadside landmark stood boarded and deteriorating, with damage from a recent tornado visible along the building. Despite decades of change and the storm damage, the distinctive curved façade remained recognizable from photographs taken during the restaurant’s glory years. Photo by Jeremy P. Ämick.