Roadhouse (premises)

A roadhouse (Australia and the United States) or stopping house (Canada) is a small mixed-use premises typically built on or near a major road in a sparsely populated area or an isolated desert region that serves passing travellers, providing food, drinks, accommodation, fuel, and parking spaces to the guests and their vehicles.

Early roadhouses provided lodging for travelers, but with the advent of faster means of transport than walking, horseback riding, or horse-drawn carriages, few now offer rooms to let.

They provide additional space for short term parking of heavy vehicles, as well as catering to travellers in private cars.

As abroad, they were a place along the road for people travelling on foot or by horse to stay at night, but today they are often pub-restaurants without rooms to rent.

With the advent of popular travel by motor car in the 1920s and '30s, a new type of roadside pub emerged, often on the new arterial roads and bypasses.

Their popularity ended with the Second World War halting recreational road travel, and the advent, post-war, of the drink driving law thwarted the full recovery of the larger instances.

Post masters provided fresh horses, and sometimes carriages and over-night accommodation for use by Royal officers called Postillones, who were uniformed guides authorised to conduct passengers, goods and messages along specific routes.