The town's 2,000-mile take-out order has finally arrived.

Wyoming's newest landmark, the famous Moondance Diner, looking a little beleaguered after a week-long cross-country trek from Manhattan, rolled into its new home in tiny LaBarge late Friday night to the delight of local residents.

"I think this is about the coolest thing I've ever seen ... I just love the idea of it and I can't wait until they get the Moondance open," resident Kristy Sims said while watching the diner being unloaded from its trailer early Saturday morning.

The diner was purchased by new owners Vince and Cheryl Pierce last month. The pair plan to renovate and then operate the famed New York City eatery in LaBarge, which currently has no operating cafes or restaurants.

The preservation and relocation of the Moondance Diner, which has been used in numerous TV episodes and films such as "Spider-Man," caught the attention of New York media and diner fans across the country and sparked feverish excitement among LaBarge's 600 or so residents.

The 77-year old Moondance served up cheeseburgers, fries and homemade shakes to Manhattan trend-setters for decades before being scheduled for demolition earlier this year.

But the Pierces rescued the historic diner when they bought it for $7,500, strapped it to flatbed and hauled it to LaBarge.

Vince Pierce and his father-in-law, Kent Profit, shared the driving during the diner's trip from New York. Profit owned the truck and the pair borrowed a flatbed trailer for the move.

A three-day bureaucratic snafu, record rainstorms in New York City and the first tornado Queens has seen in a century delayed the trip a bit, Pierce said.

The trailer was escorted by vehicles with "wide load" signs during its week-long move across New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and Wyoming.

"It was an amazing trip ... the frustration was not in the actual physical part, but the bureaucratic parts," Profit said Saturday morning. "I told the daughter when we got her (Friday night), I think I just hauled you a big, big headache that's going to need a lot of hard work."

Vince Pierce, who will oversee the renovation, said the basic structure of the old diner is sound. "With what it's been through, it's in pretty good shape," he said.

Like a new penny

The Moondance Diner in Manhattan's SoHo district was built in the late 1920s in the streamline design of the era. The sleek design featured chrome detailing, barrel roof ceilings and wrap-around windows. The diner seats about 34 people on 10 stools and six tables.

The huge incandescent revolving crescent-shaped moon sign that was later added to the diner eventually lured hungry trend-setters and celebrity revelers for breakfast.

Like other diners of the time, the Moondance fell victim to the arrival of new fast food establishments and a boom in urban redevelopment in SoHo. A real estate developer purchased the property under the diner and forced its closure earlier this year.

The old grand dame has certainly lost of bit of her Big Apple luster over the years and will need a lot of renovation work, Cheryl Pierce said.

The famous sign was removed and stuffed inside for safe keeping during the journey. Protective cardboard covered windows and plywood shrouded openings. New York residents left their own mark over the years. plastering a back wall with graffiti.

"It will rest quite nicely here," Cheryl Pierce said, pointing to the twin lots where the diner will permanently sit at the south end of Main Street in what passes for downtown LaBarge. "Sure, it's lost a little of its glitz ... but it just needs a little Wyoming love. We're going to shine it up like a new penny."

She said the new Moondance will serve traditional diner fare, including burgers, meatloaf, malts and milkshakes, to residents, the oil and gas industry workers in the area and to tourists traveling to Jackson Hole.

The renovation is expected to take about three months and the couple are shooting for a Nov. 1 grand opening. She said the landmark sign will go up last.

Cheryl Pierce said they hope to keep the diner's Manhattan roots and Big Apple ambiance intact at the new establishment.

"We want people to realize the New York history that comes with the diner ... the people like Frank Sinatra and all the New York Yankees and others that ate there," she said.

"It's those kind of stories we want to incorporate into the diner," Cheryl Pierce said. "Those stories will play a key role and we've got some neat ideas and fun stuff we want to do with this."

For Sims, it was the bullet - still lodged in the steel framing near the diner's front door - that was the most intriguing bit of history for her. It must have been some night at the Moondance that night, she said.

Once considered cultural icons in eastern and midwest America, diners are gradually disappearing across the country in the age of fast-food, according to preservationists.

Daniel Zilka, director of the American Diner Museum, said of about 6,000 diners that originally existed, fewer than 2,500 survive today.

To view video of the Moondance Diner's arrival in Wyoming, click on www.casperstartribune.net/video/video.php?v=diner

Originally published online here: http://www.jacksonholestartrib.com/articles/2007/08/19/news/top_story/8541db5e3dcc0f708725733c00016e4c.txt