Remembering Molly's Landing history after fire at iconic Route 66 restaurant

When Carla Gibson first landed a server job at Molly’s Landing, she thought it would just be a way to earn a little extra money.

“I already had two other jobs, at a Red Lobster and at a bar,” Gibson recalled. “I was kind of a workaholic back then. But Molly’s Landing was someplace special, and I realized that from the start.

“For one thing, it was a high-end kind of place — I got my first ever $100 tip working at Molly’s,” she said. “Working there was really a nice experience.”

Molly’s Landing, which has been an iconic restaurant along the Oklahoma stretch of Route 66 since it opened almost 40 years ago, was severely damaged Nov. 24 in a fire that officials said claimed the life of an individual. The victim’s name has not yet been released.

Gibson, who owns and operates Gibby C’s South in Your Mouth restaurant in Claremore, announced on her Facebook page that she is willing to hire some of the 22 employees of Molly’s Landing for her own recently opened restaurant.

“I’ve already had four young men who came by yesterday, and I got them jobs,” Gibson said. “We’re already fully staffed, but my crew has been taxed with overtime as we’re still trying to work all the kinks out of our systems, so more help is always welcomed.

“Right now, we’re open Wednesday through Sunday, but once we get the new people trained, we may open an extra day to keep everyone working,” she said.

A crowdfunding campaign has raised about $15,000 so far to benefit the 22 employees of Molly’s Landing, according to the organizers.

Molly’s Landing opened in January 1985, but opening a restaurant was not what brought owner Linda Powell to Oklahoma from Phoenix, Arizona, a year previously. It was a boat.

A 1991 story in the Tulsa Tribune recounted that Powell’s brother told her about a boat he thought she might want to buy.

The vessel, a 119-foot-by-38-foot pushboat called the Molly Smith, had guided barges up and down the Mississippi River for almost 30 years. It was retired in the late 1970s and had been donated to a church in Houston, which was looking to unload the craft after a recent hurricane made owning a boat problematic.

The Tribune story detailed how Powell sold her Arizona property, agreed on a deal for nine acres that would become the site of Molly’s Landing, and closed the deal for the Molly Smith, which — in something of an ironic twist — was transported to the Kerr-McClellan Navigational Channel in Catoosa as part of a barge tow.

“Where other people see 200 tons of floating rust,” the 1991 Tribune story stated, “Linda Powell sees a luxurious restaurant. She hopes to make her vision — a pushboat turned floating restaurant on the United States’ most inland port — a reality within the next two years.”

That dream never materialized, but Molly’s Landing, which started out as a club before being converted into a full-service, high-end restaurant, soon became one of the region’s most popular dining establishments. Powell was later joined by sons Doug Powell and Russ White to help run the restaurants.

While the food was of high quality — premium steaks along with fish and seafood dishes, rarely seen items such as grilled quail — the look of Molly’s Landing projected a sort of rural bohemian ambiance.

A 1991 review in the Tulsa Tribune described the restaurant’s unique decor as “an instant party” located within “a barn-size log cabin with a porch overlooking the Verdigris River. Decorations from floor to ceiling beams make the place seem ready for a weird garage sale: sacks of peanuts, bad paintings, an endocrine gland chart, signs, flags, deer antlers, a sombrero, deer antlers, a duck decoy, an aquarium, milk can, grindstone, a calf’s foot and strings of tiny, festive lights. The menus are painted on canoe paddles.”

The canoe paddle menus later gave way to more conventional formats, but Molly’s reputation as a serious steakhouse remained. In 2006, the restaurant was recognized by the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry as a Made in Oklahoma Restaurant of the Year, in recognition of its use of locally produced products, including cheeses, wines, seasonings and the mushrooms used in one of its most popular appetizers.

The restaurant has also been praised for its willingness to contribute to local charitable causes. From 2002 to 2016, the restaurant was the host to the Ultimate Murder Mystery, a bimonthly dinner theater company.

In a 2006 Tulsa World feature on the restaurant, Russ White said one reason for the restaurant’s success was its employees and his family’s commitment to treating those employees well.

“We latched on employees who have been with us for years,” White said. “It really is a big family around here, and that makes it easier when it’s bad or when it’s slow.”