Author Michael Wallis will talk about the Lincoln Highway on May 9 at 3:30 p.m. in the Elmer Ellis Auditorium at the University of Missouri. Wallis is author of The Lincoln Highway: Coast to Coast from Times Square to the Golden Gate along with Route 66: The Mother Road. An MU alumnus, Wallis has previously donated several first editions of his books to the university library.
RSVP is preferred; contact Sheila Voss at vosss@missouri.edu or at (573) 882-9168.
Of interest to anyone who likes old roads like the Lincoln Highway is the state of the roadside and the roadscape, and the communities along the way. Are housing and retail developments being planned with care and context, or built as quick as possible by a developer who is already looking to the next project?
Pinball may seem an odd barometer of such matters, but this article in The New York Times contains some precious insights into the loss of places that were once a haven for pinball machines – the kinds of places that old road fans embrace for their friendly service and quality products. Click the screen shot below to open the article:
Gary Stern (seen above) is the owner of Stern Pinball Inc., the world’s only remaining manufacturer of coin-operated pinball machines. The company once built 27,000 machines a year but that’s dropped to 10,000. Stern says half the new machines (at $5,000 each) go directly into people’s homes, and of the total, 40 percent are exported. Why? People still love pinball but casual players are being lost: “Corner shops, pubs, arcades and bowling alleys stopped stocking pinball machines. A younger audience turned to video games.”
Not only stopped stocking it, but the places themselves are disappearing. “The thing that’s killing pinball is not that people don’t like it,” said Tim Arnold, who recently opened The Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas [a nonprofit museum]. “It’s that there’s nowhere to play it.”
Think about new shopping plazas – would Starbucks install a pinball? Bruegger’s Bagels? Kinko’s? Dollar General? When was the last time you saw a new bowling alley, roller rink, or soda fountain being built? When was the last time you saw a pinball machine?
For the next four days, we’ll ride along with a family as they cross the country in 1924. Steve Ellis has graciously sent a transcription from a diary his Aunt Annie kept in 1924. Next month, he’ll retrace her path himself through Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska, and is looking for help in finding some of the places she mentioned. I hope all you expert roadies out there can help him!
Click to see larger: Annie, Elmer, and Pearl on their 1924 cross-country trip. Pearl was born in Oregon in 1890, married Elmer in 1917, and they moved to Washington. Elmer, Steve’s grandma’s oldest brother, was born in Bathurst, New Brunswick, Canada in 1883. Annie also was born in Bathurst in 1891 and died there in 1992. Photo courtesy Steve Ellis.
“A few years ago, I was given a trip journal of my grandma’s older sister’s 3500-mile trip from New Brunswick, Canada to Tacoma, Washington in 1924. Although Aunt Annie never mentioned the Lincoln Highway per se, she mentioned the route she took, and from Chicago to Salt Lake City it had to be the Lincoln Highway. Actually, since she crossed the border at Detroit and came west from there, she may have been on the Lincoln Highway a bit farther east than Chicago.
“Aunt Annie was about 32 when she took the trip. I knew her only as a senior citizen, but she must have been a going concern at that youthful age. She was very independent and it wouldn’t surprise me if she changed some of those punctures/flat tired to which she so often refers. I’d say she was an archetypcial woman’s libber.
“Aunt Annie gave quite a bit of detail in her journal for an uneducated woman and she frequently mentioned the tourist camps all along the way including several tourist camps along the Lincoln Highway:
Maple Grove tourist camp in Chicago;
Wheatland, Iowa;
Jefferson, Iowa;
Columbus, Nebraska;
Big Springs, Nebraska;
Laramie, Wyoming;
Salt Lake City.
“While it might be difficult to find out where the Maple Grove camp was in Chicago, a place like Wheatland, Big Springs, or Jefferson would likely only have one tourist camp. Those places are not much larger today than they were in 1924!
“In mid-May, I plan to retrace some of Aunt Annie’s trip from Chicago to Big Springs, and I’d like to stop and see things that Aunt Annie and her brother Uncle Elmer and his wife Pearl saw in 1924. I LOVE your book. For example, on page 201, I am certain that Aunt Annie, Uncle Elmer, and Aunt Pearl saw that same sign that you have pictured. Thanks for writing such a comprehensive account of this highway. [Thank YOU Steve, glad you like it! ~BB]
Click to see larger: The photo from my book that Steve refers to, a split in the road at Granger, Wyoming, 1927. It is actually an amalgamation of two images from the University of Michigan’s LHA collection. Photo courtesy UM Special Collections LIbrary.
Sunday, August 17
Left Windsor Camp at 8 a.m. Ferried the Detroit River. Just got started out of city Toledo, Ohio and had another puncture. Pulled into little garage & got it fixed. Drove on to Nash garage. Left car there to be cleaned and gone over. Driver brought us to Brunswick Hotel. Frank Eddy & wife took Aunt Jen & Pearl and I out to see city. Saw Belle Isle, Fords Hospital, the Packard Plant and beautiful homes of millionaires. Had lunch and supper in Eagle Café. Went to bed early.
Aug. 18
Had breakfast in cafeteria across from hotel. Brought car up for us at 8 o’clock. Went down to Nash Garage. Had to put on new tire. Got started at 9:15. Came thru pretty little Mich. town and thru Ann Arbor, the settlement city. Had lunch in camp at Grass Lake. Drove on 79 miles to Chicago & camped in Maple Grove Tourist Camp. Got there after dark.
Anyone know the location or fate of Maple Grove Tourist Camp?
Steve also makes these observations:
“I think Aunt Annie did very well with the place names. To us, this is not too hard, but we must consider Aunt Annie had maybe an eighth grade education and, although she was a relatively young woman at the time, she had not likely been very far from where she was born until then … and they lived not in the small town of Bathurst but in a relatively isolated area several miles out in the country, off the main road, down by the beach. All of these places would be extremely unfamiliar to her.
“The only place where she seemingly made a mistake was shortly after she came over the river from Windsor Ontario to Detroit. Away back then there was no bridge (not until the Ambassador Bridge was built in 1928), and she mentions ferrying the Detroit River. All that is just fine, but the “Toledo Ohio” comment is not consistent with where they should have gone. Yes, Toledo is maybe only 60 miles south of Detroit but, after spending time in Detroit, they headed south and west in Michigan through Ann Arbor. After she mentioned Toledo, she mentioned Fords Hospital, Belle Isle, and the Packard Plant, all places in Detroit. Maybe they went down to get someone in Toledo and came back to Detroit, but I don’t think so.”
TOMORROW: Driving to Utah
Here are some scenes courtesy the city of Evanston, Wyoming, that show what attendees will enjoy at the 2008 Lincoln Highway Association national conference this June 17-21. The first photo is east of Evanston near Eagle Rock. Next is Evanston’s Historic Depot Square along Front Street, the Lincoln Highway. The last photo shows a Lincoln Highway concrete marker near Depot Square.
Shelly Horne, 2008 Conference 2008, sends along greetings:
The theme of the conference is “Rails, Trails, and Highway Tales.” Evanston was an end of track town on the U.P.R.R. in 1868. It has a rich railroad history and many preserved railroad buildings and artifacts that you will enjoy. It has one of the few remaining original roundhouses west of the Mississippi with an operating turntable. Come ride it. Evanston sits near many of the old trails that people traveled from east to west to expand our great nation. You can visit the Mormon, Oregon, and California trails as well as the Pony Express route, all within easy driving distance.
And highway tales… we have hundreds of them. The first Wyoming Lincoln Highway consul was P.W. Spaulding from Evanston. He owned the first car in Uinta County, was a successful attorney, and a personal friend of Henry Joy, first president of the Lincoln Highway Association. We will be exhibiting a rare original LHA “Notable Service Award” given to PW Spaulding in the early years of the association. We will be giving a replica of this award to every attendee of the conference, a nice watch fob or key ring, and very rare. Hugh Colpharp will display his replica of the 10 millionth Ford Model T at the conference.
You could hardly cross the wide open country of Wyoming or the deserts of Utah without a water bag dangling from your radiator. So we have replicated the desert water bag, complete with cork and rope, as a tote bag for your memorabilia collection at the conference. We love replicas. You will be provided with a special table decoration at the annual banquet, a crystal-like replica of an old antique Packard automobile engraved with the LHA logo. Take it, cherish it, put it in your water bag replica with your LHA medallion.
The tours will be exciting. West in Echo Canyon you will explore Mormon history and learn how the canyon walls were used to defend against Johnson’s army; travel past the “Witches” to Taggart, to Wanship and the Echo reservoir. East to Fort Bridger and the Black and Orange cabins, then on to Miller’s crossing. See an eagles nest high on the bluffs of Church Butte. On the return trip to Evanston, watch film of the original military convoy that crossed the country from Washington DC to San Francisco on the Lincoln. See the comments of a young Lt. Colonel Dwight D. Eisenhower about his experience on the convoy.
The speakers will present a myriad of topics from notable Lincoln Highway people, to Utah highway history, to the 1908 New York-to-Paris Automobile Race. For dessert, we will be entertained by Willie Le Clair, Shoshone Indian, with stories of the Shoshone and Chief Washakie in Evanston.
Tour historic Evanston. Visit the Sunset Cabins on the Lincoln Highway. See Evanston’s original Lincoln Highway markers, and meet and visit with your LHA counterparts from across the country to exchange “Highway Tales.” You will be amongst the privileged few to attend and view the first Lincoln Highway Art and Photo show assembled by Ms. Kell Brigan, an LHA member in California.
If gas and airfare prices continue to rise it will become more expensive to attend future conferences. This is the time, this is the place, the 16th annual LHA conference, June 17th to 21st in Evanston, WY. Complete a registration form at www.lincolnhighwayassoc.org by May 2 to be eligible for a free conference reimbursement drawing. See you here!
Along with the not-surprising news that the fire-damaged Sleepy Hollow Tavern will soon be torn down, the Tribune Review has a story about the tavern’s sign along the Lincoln Highway west of Ligonier. A prankster has been changing the sign, using fire-related puns like “PA Hotspot.” Even local officials are taking it in stride. Here’s a screen shot from the Trib with the latest, “Voted Hottest Wings by the Ligonier Fire Co.”
The Tribune-Democrat and Tribune-Review report that Pennsylvania state police have arrested Edgar Clinton Wiltrout, 55, of Ligonier, and charged him with arson in a February 23 fire that destroyed The Hollow Tavern along the Lincoln Highway in Unity Township, Westmoreland County. He also was charged with multiple felony counts of burglary, causing or risking a catastrophe, criminal mischief, and reckless endangerment. Damage was estimated at approximately $450,000 with no injuries reported. Wiltrout is in Westmoreland County Prison in lieu of $1 million bail.
Above: A vintage Sleepy Hollow matchbook, courtesy Cyrus Hosmer.
Sleepy Hollow was a popular stop since being built 1939-1940, but suffered after the westbound lanes of Lincoln Highway/US 30 were moved across Loyalhanna Creek.
As we continue sorting things while packing to move, here’s another interesting artifact. When I have a mystery photo or postcard, I usually know the answer as to what or where is it. This time I’m not so sure. I’ve been told this oval brass map showing the Lincoln Highway could have been on a radiator or a gas pump. I know others are out there, but what is it really from?
Texaco ran a publicity campaign in 1929 promoting famous trails across the U.S., most notably the Lincoln Highway. They ran ads in their own corporate magazine, published little strip maps (though a bit inaccurate – see them on my web site), and took 2-page spreads like this one in the Saturday Evening Post. Click the image below to see it larger.
In the just-puublished Spring 2008 Lincoln Highway Forum, long-time editor Gregory Franzwa pays me the compliment that the blog you’re reading might make the magazine’s news column obsolete. Thanks for the kind words GF but there’s lots more news to read in the print version, let alone throughout the rest of the 46 packed pages. Below is the cover – can you name the building and photo location? Answer at the end of this post.
The new issue is filled with rich color images. LHA Past President Randy Wagner shares his photos of Wyoming in preparation for the 2008 national conference in June. You also find color images highlighting the Victory Highway, California happenings, vintage postcards, and even the Lincoln Highway Trading Post (sales benefit the LHA). Click here to learn more about joining the Lincoln Highway Association and getting the quarterly magazine.
Answer to the cover question – that’s the Virginian Hotel in Medicine Bow, Wyoming. It’s named for the novel by Owen Wister, The Virginian, which he wrote in town (before the hotel was built). You can still grab a meal or drink, or stay the night.
As we prepare to move, I spend lots of time sorting and packing. I’ve been looking through my photos lately and am amazed at how much things have changed along the Lincoln Highway in the 20 years since I began photographing it. Here are a couple views from February 1992 of the Star Motel in Minerva, Ohio (22071 US Route 30/E Lincoln Way). The row of rooms remains but was converted years ago into apartments. I believe the sign survives too but repainted and maybe stripped of its neon.
Click the map above for a full-size view of the Lincoln Highway.
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