The 3rd Annual Lincoln Highway Arts Festival in Mt. Vernon, Iowa, is set for September 27. Some 40 artists will diplay their work, while docents lead tours of the Lincoln Highway and three National Historic Districts. The Lincoln Highway Arts Festival is sponsored by the Mount Vernon Area Arts Council. Visit http://www.visitmvl.com for more information. And tell them what a great logo they have!
Archive for the ‘history’ Category
Lincoln Hwy Arts Festival in Mt Vernon, Iowa
June 11, 2008Sebak on the road again for summer LH video
June 9, 2008I met Rick Sebak about 1990 as he was preparing to produce a show about roadside attractions in Pennsylvania. We traveled the Lincoln Highway together, and now almost two decades later (seems like two years!) he’s traveling the Lincoln Highway coast-to-coast for an hour-long show to debut later this summer. We’ve also worked together on programs about diners, Isaly’s, and one called Stuff That’s Gone, but we still talk most about the Lincoln Highway and the places we saw back then that are now gone, most notably the Ship Hotel.
Above: Jarrett, Rick, and Bob at the Western Terminus of the LH.
Last fall Rick and cameraman Bob Lubomski made it to the Pacific and back with Jarrett Buba. This time Rick and Bob are joined in the QED van by sound-and-video man Glenn Syska, who is also helping post their daily blog. They’re leaving early today with a plan of getting as far west ASAP. Of course, that was the plan last time! There’s never enough time or daylight to fit in all the cool places along the way….
The blog for his last long LH trip ended September 1 at San Francisco. Rick just updated it to include the days heading back east — scroll down and you’ll find another entry for that day called No Reservations. Start there and remember the days get more recent as you go up (so the top is the most recent, when they had reached Nebraska). Posts from the trip starting today should start arriving tonight or tomorrow — they have some great stops planned.
Also check out his Video Postcards link, which offer a great daily look at sites along the way.
BTW, note that the web address has changed — it can now be found at http://www.wqed.org/tv/sebak/lincoln_hwy/blog/. So has the name — no longer just Lincoln Highway Postcards, it now carries the name of the show, A Ride Along The Lincoln Highway. You can see when the blog updates by watching the RSS feed on the page in the column to the right.
Ozoners' 75th anniversary is today
June 6, 2008
It was 75 years ago today that the first drive-in theater opened. Celebrate these icons of car culture and the open road with a visit this week. What’s playing? Indiana Jones, Kung Fu Panda, The Strangers, Iron Man, Narnia–Prince Caspian, Baby Mama, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Made of Honor, and What Happens in Vegas are just some of the flicks on local outdoor screens. Clck the drive-in page to the right to see a list of operating “ozoners” along the Lincoln Highway.
Now it’s time to start the show.
MVPA to recreate 1919 motor convoy in 2009
June 3, 2008Next summer, the Military Vehicle Preservation Association will recreate the 1919 Transcontinental Motor Convoy, a grueling trip perhaps best known for including young Dwight Eisenhower. The Lincoln Highway Association is working with the group, and one of the stops will be the 2009 LHA conference in South Bend, Indiana—arriving on Thursday, June 18, and joining an LHA parade on Friday.
More than 60 participants hope to drive some of the route, many of them all the way coast-to-coast Departure from Washington DC is Saturday, June 13, with arrival in San Francisco on Saturday, July 4. Here’s a description from the site:
In 1919, the US Army’s Military Transportation Corps (MTC) undertook a transcontinental Convoy to demonstrate the need for a mechanized Army. This “hooves to wheels” plan to modernize America’s fighting force needed an attention-getting event to energize Congress and the citizenry, and parading the Army’s military might from coast-to-coast along the new Lincoln Highway was a great way to get demonstrate new vehicles. As part of its mission to honor our country’s military vehicle history, the MVPA has decided to recreate the famous 1919 convoy in 2009 as a 90th Anniversary celebration of the achievement and in conjunction with the nation’s President Lincoln Bicentennial celebration.
Click HERE for a PDF of the MVPA’s log of the route and overnight stops.
Diamond anniversary of the drive-in theater
June 2, 2008TO-DO THIS WEEKEND: Celebrate the 75th anniversary of the drive-in theater with a visit to a drive-in. Take a chair and sit under the stars, buy some popcorn at the snack bar, stay for both features, and try to figure out why you stopped (or never started) going. Don’t complain that no drive-ins are nearby, they can still be found in 47 states.
ABOVE: At the drive-in, 4th of July, 2007 . Photo © by Brian Butko
It was June 6, 1933, when Richard Hollingshead Jr opened the first drive-in theater, lighting the night sky in Camden, New Jersey. By the late 1950s, thousands of “ozoners” sat at the suburban fringe of most every town, but then they began closing. Blame TV, VCRs, smaller cars, fewer family movies, less need for a private getaway, Daylight Savings Time, rising insurance on the playgrounds, aging equipment, retiring owners, skyrocketing land values – or all of them – but only 397 theaters remain (with 650 screens). About half of those are members of the United Drive-In Theatre Owners Association, a group that celebrates the industry and its accomplishments. In fact, Hollingshead’s son, Richard III, was guest of honor this past winter at UDITOA annual convention. Here are some drive-ins still operating on or very close to the Lincoln Highway, pulled from the UDITOA list site plus my own recollection – please send additions:
CA
Sacramento: SACRAMENTO 6 DRIVE-IN
CO
Fort Collins: HOLIDAY TWIN DRIVE-IN – www.holidaytwindrive-in.com
Fort Morgan: VALLEY DRIVE-IN
IN
Plymouth: TRI-WAY DRIVE-IN – www.triwaydrivein.com
Valparaiso: 49’er DRIVE-IN – www.49erdrivein.com
NV
Sparks: EL RANCHO DRIVE-IN – www.westwinddriveins.com
OH
Kenton: HI-ROAD DRIVE-IN – www.metheatres.com
between Van Wert and Delphos: Van-Del Drive-In
Mansfield: SPRINGMILL DRIVE-IN – www.springmilldrive-in.com
PA
Latrobe: HI-WAY DRIVE-IN
UT
Riverdale: MOTOR VU DRIVE-IN (4 screens)
Tooele: MOTOR VU DRIVE-IN
WV
Chester: HILLTOP DRIVE-IN
This list will now be available as one of the easy-reference pages listed to the right. Check there for updates.
Nebraska governor views Kearney damage
May 31, 2008The Kearney Hub has produced a video showing the governor’s visit to view damage from the recent tornadoes. Click the screen shot below to go to the Hub‘s page:
McDonald's, Rohrer's survive & adapt to roadside
May 29, 2008My trip last week along the Lincoln Highway near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, took me past many old businesses including a McDonald’s that retains its 1960s arch, and an old family business in a new location. Here’s the McDonald’s on the west end of Lancaster. Few of these single-arch sign survive; a similar one was just removed in Huntsville, Alabama, but was saved by the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio.
And here’s the new location in Mountville of Rohrer’s Hardware, a decades-old family business that was profiled recently at Lancaster Online. The story contains interesting insights for anyone interested in preserving non-chain businesses and roadscapes.
Following is an excerpt from the news story:
Jim Rohrer is a die-hard hardware guy — a survivor in an age when big-box retailers are driving family-owned hardware stores to the brink of extinction.
He’s been in the business since 1975, when he and his father, Harry, opened Rohrer’s Hardware off Columbia Avenue between Centerville and Mountville.
Harry, 85, still comes into the store for a couple of hours nearly every day, Jim Rohrer said.
The Rohrers survived a fire in 1992, moving the store down the road to Woods Edge Plaza just in time to see Lowe’s open a home improvement center on nearby Rohrerstown Road.
Now, they have moved Rohrer’s Hardware again, a half-mile away to 2734 Columbia Ave., where the traffic is less congested and the overhead less expensive, but where Lowe’s still looms as the store’s biggest competitor.
“I could look at my sales figures and tell you exactly” when Lowe’s opened six years ago, Rohrer said.
Yet, despite that drastic drop in sales, Rohrer has been able to keep going — move and all — by catering to longtime customers, and by providing some of the services and supplies that big-box stores don’t find profitable….
What they don’t realize, he said, is that very often his prices are actually lower.
“If people shop around, they’re going to find out [the big boxes] cannot sell every product cheaper than everybody else,” Rohrer said. It’s just the “they spend millions to build that perception.”…
“People have to realize if they want stores like us to be here they need to use us as more than just the store of last resort,” he said. [my emphasis]
Here’s an image from the article:
Ace Drive-In remains a roadside gem
May 28, 2008The Ace Drive-In along the Lincoln Highway in Joliet, Illinois, is a welcome site in warm weather—classic food at a place little changed from a half century ago. It is one of the many brief profiles in my next book, Lincoln Highway Companion, but here with a great story about the place are impressions by John Weiss, who visits regularly with his wife Lenore:
We promote historic highways because they are a link to the past, a time not so long ago where mom, pop and apple pie culture was in abundance. Radios would sing out, “See the USA in your Chevrolet, America is asking you to call!”
Nothing makes your mind drift back to those glory years than one word: CARHOP. How cool it was to pull into the drive-in, flash your lights, and a pretty young girl would come to your car. Watching her come back balancing a full tray of frosted root beer, burgers, and fries was remarkable. “Please raise your window” she would say, then proceed to hook that mysterious tray onto your car door window.
Compare that with pulling up and talking to a machine. Then drive to a window to pay and pick up your order. Then you hear the mundane line, “Have a nice day.” That is not cool!
Not many original drive-ins with real car hops still exist. But there is one in Joliet, Illinois. If you are looking for nostalgia and a slice of Americana, then you have to visit the ACE DRIVE-IN. The Ace has been here since 1949. This fantastic icon is located on historic Lincoln Highway (Route 30) in Joliet. For you Route 66ers, Ace is only a short distance west of Ottawa Street, Route 66.
Homemade frosty root beer by the glass or by the gallon is available. All those great food treats that you would expect along with their famous car hops makes this a blast from the past. Family minivans and regular cars make up the majority of the customers, but all heads turn when the inevitable classic car pulls in with a Fonzie wannabe at the wheel. Even picnic tables under the trees are available with car hop service.
In spring, summer, and fall, this is the place to find good food, good prices, and those remarkable vanishing symbols of nostalgia, carhops.
That’s John researching this story in his 1966 Mustang!
Ace Drive-In
1207 Plainfield Rd/Lincoln Hwy/US 30
Joliet, Illinois
(815) 726-7741
Photos © by John and Lenore Weiss.
Vintage motels hang on near York, Pennsylvania
May 27, 2008My drive last week along the Lincoln Highway in central Pennsylvania took me past many mid-century motels. Here are three east of York along Market Street/PA 462: Barnhart’s, the Modernaire, and the Flamingo.
I’ll briefly profile a few motels like these in every LH state in my forthcoming book, Lincoln Highway Companion.
Highway 30 Barn Tour and Picnic, June 7-8
May 26, 2008Twenty five barns will be featured on the Iowa Barn Foundation’s Highway 30 Barn Tour and Picnic, Saturday, June 7 and Sunday, June 8, 2008. This tour stretches from river-to-river across Iowa along US 30, the Lincoln Highway. Barns on this free, self-guided tour will be open both days 8:30 am to 5:30 pm. The tour is dedicated to educating people about the importance of barn history and preservation.
Above is one wing of the Iowa State University Horse Barn, Ames (from the Iowa Barn Foundation web site).
The Highway 30 picnic and barn dance, featuring the Barn Owls, will be held Saturday evening in the Community Center at the Story County Fairgrounds in Nevada, Iowa, from 5:30 to 9 pm. To reach the fairgrounds, turn off old Highway 30 at First Avenue in Nevada, and travel south to I Avenue. Cost of the picnic and dance is $10 per person, children $5. Learn more about the Iowa tour and all the barns at the Iowa Barn Foundation.
Lincoln Highway News 