Idlewild & Soakzone, a family-style amusement and water park along the Lincoln Highway in Ligonier, Pennsylvania, is set to be sold to Parques Reunidos, a Spanish company that manages 61 parks in Europe and America. Starting as a picnic grove for the Ligonier Valley Railroad in 1878, rides were added in 1931, and Story Book Forest fairy tale park in 1956 (a rare survivor of that era). It also includes an official Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood Of Make Believe trolley ride and a Lincoln Highway-themed photo-op created by the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor (as seen below in their photo):
Idlewild has been operated since 1983 by Kennywood Entertainment, a family-owned company that also operates two vintage parks in New England and two properties not far from the Lincoln Highway near Pittsburgh: a water park and Kennywood Park in West Mifflin. Kennywood Park itself is an institution; starting as a trolley park in 1896, it was purchased in 1906 by F.W. Henninger and Andrew McSwigan, whose familes have owned and operated it since. It’s also within walking distance of where I’ve lived my entire life, so friends are quite impassioned about the surprise announcement. Both parks are full of vintage rides such as Kennywood’s Auto Ride at left.
Commentors to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette are overwhelmingly concerned about the changes a large corporation might bring, and that the cherished American sites will be owned by an overseas firm. The Pittsburgh Tribune Review likewise reports that people in the Ligonier Valley have mixed emotions, hoping that promises to maintain Idlewild’s atmosphere will prevail over corporate cost-cutting. Kennywood’s current owners assure the public that the new company is committed to maintaining everything that people love about the parks.
Another Trib article says that half the new owner’s parks (in fact, the 33 US locations) were just bought in October:
Parques Reunidos has grown quickly since its acquisition in January by the London-based Candover private equity investment fund for $1.22 billion. Kennywood said the Spanish company approached its owners with an offer as part of a plan to expand its ownership of family entertainment venues worldwide.
Remember those great gift shops and souvenir stands with all kinds of wacky stuff to buy? And how little (if anything) your parents let you get?? Well you’re grown up — you can stop now and stock up. BUT WAIT! Where’d they all go? Yes, very few survive, so when you do see one, it’s even more important you stop — to satisfy your souvenir craving and to help keep the place in business.
Thankfully in the 20 years I’ve been stopping at Mister Ed’s Elephant Museum, it’s only gotten BETTER. Ed Gotwalt received his first elephant as a wedding gift in 1967 and began collecting anything related to the animal. When his collection outgrew the house, he opened a general store to display them. The current location has old-fashioned candy, wacky new candy creations, elephant-themed gifts, and of course, roasted peanuts. The museum holds more than 6,000 elephant collectibles. (Miss Ellie, the talking elephant outisde, says 4,000 in the video below, but I think they forget to tell her the most recent figure.)
Mister Ed’s is located at 6019 Chambersburg Road (between old and new Lincoln Highway routes) between Gettysburg and Chambersburg. It’s open daily 10 am – 5 pm, and admission is FREE.
Try out this video — my first on YouTube! — taken in October with my still digital camera’s video option. It’s only 20 seconds long but you’ll hear the fiberglass Miss Ellie Phant talk a bit about the place.
Another interesting shot from John and Lenore Weiss is this distinctive but abandoned gas station located somewhere in the middle of the US – that’s all I’ll say to start since RoadDog guessed the last one pretty quickly! Know where it’s at? Please leave your guesses by clicking Comments below the picture.
Here’s a relaxing ride on the Lincoln Highway/US 40 starting just west of Donner Summit in California.
The motorcycles (one following another) head east, top the summit, cross the Rainbow Bridge (site of the recent bear rescue), and pull over for a view of Donner Lake below. Then it’s back of the road among the pine trees and gentle curves as the highway descends the mountain. Much smoother than most videos shot form a moving vehicle. Note that the bridge is a later alignment – the original Lincoln Highway curved under the tracks of the Transcontinental Railroad, to the right of the bridge, and can still be walked.
Video by Mellowmike43, added August 2007, with music by Arlo Guthrie.
Above: Youngville Station, a beautiful restoration effort on the Lincoln Highway west of Cedar Rapids. When it’s open, visitors will find great pie and a historical display. The photos here show places NOT in the radio tour. Photo courtesy of G. Januska.
Gianofer Fields of Chicago Public Radio has completed her Lincoln Highway tour, but after 5 entries (plus a launch segment), she stopped along the Lincoln only 1 of those 6 days. As she admitted on the third day, ” I’m starting to rethink my whole Lincoln Highway plan. Maybe I should forget my linear route and think of the highway as a springboard.” Here are her topics:
Launch: Burlington’s Crookedest Street
1: Eldon’s American Gothic house
2: Missouri Valley’s Welcome Center and Museum of Religious Arts
3: Elkhorn’s Danish Windmill
4: Amana Colonies
5: Le Claire’s Buffalo Bill Museum
All very interesting, but only #2 is along the Lincoln Highway. What did she miss?
Trying to think of a list as quickly as possible, I came up with:
• Smith Brothers General Store in Clinton
• Cedar Rapids Museum of Art and Grant Wood Studio
• Youngville Station (top photo)
• Lincoln Cafe and Preston’s station in Belle Plaine
• King Tower Cafe (above) and LH bridge in Tama
• Shady Oaks Tree House east of Marshalltown
• Niland’s Cafe in Colo
• Three concrete bridges on the old road near Grand Junction
• Lincoln statue and carillon tower in Jefferson
• Moss markers with Lincoln busts north of Scranton (below)
• Spanish-deco Park Motel in Dennison
• Woodbine’s brick streets and Brick Street Station
• Loess Hills winding road across from Omaha
There’s lots more, from great old signs and garages to wonderful people in the diners and coffee shops along the way. What is your favorite?
On Tuesday, Chicago Public Radio’s Gianofer Fields reported from her LH trip that her reception at the Harrison County Historical Village and Iowa Welcome Center along the Lincoln Highway in western Iowa was not very welcoming. She has even subtitled that day’s entry, “What happens when the welcoming center isn’t so welcoming?”:
FIELDS: Tell me about this place that we are standing in.
HEIM [center employee]: Well, this is the welcome center that we are standing in.
I suppose that I should have taken that massive silence as a sign that the welcome center lady wasn’t in the mood for company. When I saw the old cabin perched on a small hill by the highway; I thought it had, “Stop here roadside attraction,” written all over it. So I did in hopes of learning more about it.
HEIM: Well, it has a wealth of information and antiques in it and it takes about an hour to go through, self guided usually.
Did I just get the bums rush? Clearly, I am on my own.
Above: Half the operational expenses for the village/welcome center are covered by sales in the Iowa Products Store and village admission fees.
I asked center coordinator Kathy Dirks about the two things that seemed to bother Ms. Fields—the lack of enthusiasm and the self-guided tour. Here is her response:
I wish I would have been here and that I could be here everyday to guarantee every person’s experience that steps through our front door would be stellar and involve the highest level of customer service. Unfortunately, it’s not humanly possible because we are open 361 days a year. So on many weekends and other days when I’m unable to be here due to meetings, vacations, etc., we pay some of our volunteers to man the facility. Almost all are elderly because the hours are limited and the pay low due to our limited budget. (My opinion would be almost all of them would be totally intimidated by a surprise microphone interview as well.)…
Not to make any excuses for what happened because there are none, but it can also be somewhat of a challenge to work at this particular facility because of the volume of knowledge the volunteers/workers are expected to know about Iowa – from everything tourism-related, to agriculture, to state laws, to about anything else that could cross your mind. I’ve worked here 13 years and still get questions I’ve never been asked before. I would have hoped though that everyone working here could have answered questions about this facility. I see much more intensive training needs to happen.
Our goal at the Harrison County Historical Village and Welcome Center has always been to supply the best service possible. I believe that on many occasions we do succeed in achieving that goal based on comments from customers and the amount of repeat business we receive. I absolutely hate when it doesn’t happen. Unfortunately, I can’t repeat Gianofer Fields experience here and make everything perfect. I can only learn from it and do whatever possible so it isn’t repeated….
We only offer self-guided tours on a regular basis and state that in our brochure. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough business, nor large enough income, to offer guided tours on a regular basis. The facility sits on 17 acres and the museum is in five different buildings covering about 4 1/2 acres. On many days, we only have one person that works the entire facility – beginning people on museum tours, answering welcome center questions, waiting on people in the gift shop, sweeping the floor, etc. If I had been here by myself, I would not have been able to give Gianofer Fields a guided tour of the museum either without locking the door to the welcome center/gift shop.
It’s obvious Ms. Dirks cares an awful lot about customer satisfaction while struggling with limited staff and resources. And Ms. Fields (who has not responded to my emails, though the station’s Director of Communications did one time) would probably understand these points too if she had known or been told in a more positive manner. Maybe Ms. Fields can return some day and give us all an update.
Waymarking is like a scavenger hunt for interesting places. Using a GPS locator, waymarking not only means marking a location using latitude and longitude coordinates, but categorizing it and adding unique information for others to learn about it. That’s why those of us who only see the results online can still follow along in the fun. There are more than 70 Lincoln Highway markers of all sorts on Waymarking.com, from murals to brick monuments in Ohio, and especially the 1928 concrete posts (originals and reproductions). Waymarkers post an image or two at each location and supply a description. Here are some nice examples, all used with permission.
This marker painted on a pole just east of Central City, Nebraska. was located by plainsdrifter358, aka Barbara and Bill.
The marker below comemmorates the 1927 concrete bridge that carried the LH/Delphos-Upper Sandusky Road over the Ottawa River near Gomer, Ohio, taken by Stephen Shepherd.
The interesting monument below, probably overlooked by LH fans, was found at 1600 Plainfield Road in Joliet by a member cldisme.
According to the plaque at its base, this
life-size cold cast bronze sculpture of a 1915 Joliet road worker, seated on a hand-cut ceramic mosaic column, represents the historic Lincoln Highway and the birth of our modern day highway system. Also, included in the mosaic is an image of Abraham Lincoln medallion. The sculpture is dedicated to the men and women of the Will-Grundy Counties Building Trades Council and the construction companies of the Contractors Association of Will & Grundy Counties who make our roads possible.
On July 1, 1913, a group of automobile enthusiasts and industry officials led by Carl Fisher, created the Lincoln Highway Association (LHA), “to procure the establishment of a continuous improved highway from the Atlantic to the Pacific, open to the lawful traffic of all description without toll charges” and to be a lasting memorial to our 16 th president, Abraham Lincoln. Prior to the Lincoln Highway, the existing roads were nothing more than dirt paths, which became impossible to traverse even after the lightest rain. There were very few filling stations along the proposed route, few places to eat, and even fewer places to find lodging.
Since highway maps and signage did not exist, a uniform way of marking the highway became a necessity. A design was created that consisted of a concrete post, a blue arrow, and Lincoln’s image on a medallion. On July 8, 1928, the Boy Scouts of America installed the concrete sign posts next to 3,100 miles of roadway at all important turns and junction points from New York to San Francisco.
Check out the site for dozens more Lincoln Highway markers along (and sometimes far from) the road.
Colo, Iowa, city clerk Scott Berka told me today that construction is progressing well at the Colo Motel, part of a wonderful “one-stop” restoration project in central Iowa. Painting is done and carpenters will start trimming next week, but furniture was just ordered today so it looks like it will be the first of the year before the motel reopens. Sounds like it will be ready in time for Springtime road trips!
Chicago Public Radio’s Gianofer Fields is traveling the Lincoln Highway through Iowa. On her way to the western end of the state, she stopped in Eldon (65 miles due south of Belle Plaine, a favorite stop for LH travelers) to visit the house made famous by artist Grant Wood. His 1930 American Gothic painting, on display at the Art Institute of Chicago, is one of the most parodied, portraying a farmer and his daughter (usually thought to be his wife—though each were models and never met) in front of a white farm house with a distinctive upper window. Visit the CPR web page for a transcript or listen to the audio version. When Gianofer arrives at the western edge of Iowa, she makes her next entry at the Iowa Visitors Center (above, from its website) and its 1853 log cabin, located between Logan and Missouri Valley. She gets a less-than-enthusiastic welcome (not good news for LH boosters). She then heads northeast to the nearby non-profit Museum of Religious Arts along US 30 just south of Logan and has a friendlier experience, though as she finds, it is only Christian exhibits despite the more inclusive name.Below (from the MRA website) is one of its King of Kings displays: life-size wax figurines that portray nine Biblical scenes such as the annunciation, the nativity, Palm Sunday, the last supper, the crucifixion, and resurrection. They were sculpted by Leone Chaney in the 1960s for Sunken Gardens in St. Petersburg, Florida, then in the late 1990s, they were moved to the Museum of Religious Arts.
Click the map above for a full-size view of the Lincoln Highway.
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Idlewild & Soakzone, a family-style amusement and water park along the Lincoln Highway in Ligonier, Pennsylvania, is set to be sold to Parques Reunidos, a Spanish company that manages 61 parks in Europe and America. Starting as a picnic grove for the Ligonier Valley Railroad in 1878, rides were added in 1931, and Story Book Forest fairy tale park in 1956 (a rare survivor of that era). It also includes an official Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood Of Make Believe trolley ride and a Lincoln Highway-themed photo-op created by the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor (as seen below in their photo):
It’s also within walking distance of where I’ve lived my entire life, so friends are quite impassioned about the surprise announcement. Both parks are full of vintage rides such as Kennywood’s Auto Ride at left.
Colo, Iowa, city clerk Scott Berka told me today that construction is progressing well at the Colo Motel, part of a wonderful “one-stop” restoration project in central Iowa. Painting is done and carpenters will start trimming next week, but furniture was just ordered today so it looks like it will be the first of the year before the motel reopens. Sounds like it will be ready in time for Springtime road trips!
When Gianofer arrives at the western edge of Iowa, she makes her 
Lincoln Highway News 