Ashford is a small town in northeast Connecticut.
The fact that Ashford has a motel is thanks to its location on the Wilbur Cross Highway (now I-84), which has been a main travel route since the 1940s.
During I-84 (I-86) reconstruction in the late 1970s, the motel's roadside sign encroached just enough into the widened right-of-way that part of it had to be cut off; for a time, the sign read "ASHFORD MOTE".
Ashford has seen two of its highways change numbers a few decades earlier, only to revert back in the 1980s. Route 74 became part of US 44, but is now Route 74 again; and I-84 became I-86, then I-84.