I’ll be giving a PowerPoint presentation tonite just a few miles from the site of the S.S. Grand View Ship Hotel, the best-known roadside attraction along the Lincoln Highway until it burned in 2001. Central City is the closet (tiny) town so everyone there worked at, ate at, and celebrated at the Ship — should be lots of fun.
Here are photos of the Ship Hotel’s dining room about 1940 and the outside about 1975. That kid looks like me! But it’s not.
Scott Berka writes that while the city of Colo, Iowa, is still looking for someone to lease the cafe at Reed/Niland Corner, a farmers market will take place there Thursdays from July 1 – September 23, 4pm – 7pm.
FRESH Produce! ~ ORIGINAL Crafts!
HOME BAKED goods! ~ Ice Cream!
If you are interested in being a vendor at the Colo Farmers’ Market, reserve a table for a week or the season by emailing them at colofarmersmarket@gmail.com or for more information contact Colo Development Group at (641) 377-2278. The adjacent Colo Motel continues in operation.
The Somerset Daily American reports that Pennsylvania’s Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor has been selected by the national LHA to receive the Educator of the Year Award at its forthcoming annual conference.
Executive Director Olga Herbert will accept this award on June 25 in Dixon, Ill. The award is a result of the organization’s Roadside Giants of the Lincoln Highway project with five career and technology students and community members from Greensburg, Ligonier, Somerset, Everett and Chambersburg. The award also recognizes the development and distribution of The Lincoln Highway Road Trip Board Game, which reflects the 200-mile corridor and its attractions. The board game was given to 68 middle schools along the highway.
A photo feature by Diane Stoneback for The Morning Call in Allentown, Pa., features a couple dozen interesting photos of the Lincoln Highway in central Pennsylvania. Most places, like the Shoe House, get a number of views. And note, when a guy at Dutch Haven holds up a LH book, there are others such as Greetings from the Lincoln Highway that also feature the place famous for its Shoo Fly Pie!
UPDATE: An accompanying article was published on Sunday, June 6.
Al Pfingstl, LHA director for NJ, wrote that on Sunday May 16, 2010, the Edison Memorial Tower Corporation held an 85th Anniversary Celebration of its Menlo Park Historical Site. He also passed along an article from The Star-Ledger (January 24) that tells of restoration plans:
Edison Township took its name from the famed inventor who perfected the light bulb in the sprawling Middlesex County town.
But on the site of Thomas Edison’s laboratory, in the town’s Menlo Park section, sits a crumbling concrete tower surrounded by a makeshift metal fence and a tiny, shack-like museum.
The Thomas Edison tower and museum in Edison are both in need of repair.
For years, the lab has been overshadowed by the inventor’s West Orange laboratory, which boasts a popular museum that recently underwent a $13 million renovation. The Menlo Park site has long had trouble securing money for improvements.
The future, however, looks brighter. Work is expected to begin this summer to restore the memorial tower — part of a plan that includes a bigger museum and science center at the 37-acre historic site on Christie Street just off Route 27 (Lincoln Highway)….
A surge in funds has helped. The nonprofit Edison Memorial Tower Corp., formed to revitalize the site, has raised $3 million in four years….
Thomas Edison moved to Menlo Park in 1876, when he was 29. There, he patented more than 400 inventions — including the phonograph and incandescent light bulb. It’s where he earned the nickname “The Wizard of Menlo Park.”
In 1938, the 130-foot Art-Deco tower was raised in his honor. Sixteen years later, in 1954, Raritan Township changed its name to Edison Township to honor the famous inventor…. The Menlo Park lab collapsed in 1913 and Henry Ford used remnants to build a replica in Dearborn, Mich., in 1929.
The ramshackle Menlo Park museum still houses one of Edison’s first light bulbs, 22 working phonographs and a letter the inventor penned to a newspaper editor who gave him the “Wizard” nickname. About 10,000 people visit each year.
Mike Buettner sent along a May 9 clipping from The Lima News about a new Lincoln Highway pillar in Ohio. Dedicated on May 1, 2010, near Williamstown, it stands where an original one had been set in 1930. The Eagle Creek Historical Organization (ECHO) planned the dedication with a meeting of the state’s LHA chapter. The pillar now overlooks the intersection of U.S. 68 and the fomer Lincoln Highway exit to the town. Photo courtesy ECHO.
The Kearney Hub reported on the Lincoln Highway Association’s plans to celebrate the road’s centennial in the Nebraska city, including new signage.
“This is something that we have wanted to accomplish for a number of years, and it’s wonderful to see the signs up representing the history that once passed through our community,” said Sarah Focke of the Kearney Visitors Bureau.
The visitors bureau has been working with several other Kearney organizations to erect the 12 signs and to lay the groundwork for the Lincoln Highway Association’s 2013 convention in Kearney.
The markers, with the letter “L” and red and blue bands, are going up along Highway 30, which passes east to west through Kearney.
A full article was in the May 26 Hub print edition.
Here’s a release reprinted from Southwest Iowa News about a talk this Sunday in Council Bluffs.
The Historical Society of Pottawattamie County will celebrate the Lincoln Highway in the final lecture of its spring lecture series at the RailsWest Railroad Museum, 16th Avenue and South Main Street.
On Sunday, Francie O’Leary, project manager for the Lincoln Highway Heritage Byway in western Iowa, will speak. The presentation is free to the public and will cover the story of the Lincoln Highway and explain how historic byway development can benefit the communities along the route. The lecture starts at 2 p.m.
For the past year, O’Leary has researched historical photos and literature for Pottawattamie, Harrison, Crawford, Carroll and Greene counties to be developed into a traveling Lincoln Highway exhibit.
More historic photos, stories and information related to the Lincoln Highway route from 1900 to 1940 are sought. The public is encouraged to bring any related material. Scanning and recording equipment will be available in the museum following the presentation until 4:30 p.m. For more information, contact O’Leary at (712) 792-4415, francieoleary@gmail.com or go online to http://www.mmdividercd.org.
The Historical Society encourages owners of classic automobiles to motor on down to the RailsWest to show them off. For more information, contact the Historical Society at 323-2509 or info@thehistoricalsociety.org.
Our friend David at the 42N blog once again brings us news from Iowa. On May 3 the Palisades Hotel near Mount Vernon, Iowa, was demolished in just three hours; at right are before and after pics from his blog. He writes, “The structure was built in the 1880s and was known as the Cedar Springs Hotel. Its original guests were railroad employees working on a nearby quarry…. Palisades Hotel was the place to go long before the convenience of getting there was possible. The hotel stood 20 years or so before the Lincoln Highway was built nearby and many more years before modern State Highway 30 came even closer. Better roads and more reliable cars made visiting other sites around the region more accessible, and eventually helped lead the hotel into retirement in the 1950s. The demolition of the Palisades Hotel (aka Cedar Springs Hotel, Upper Palisades Hotel, Palisades Hotel, Biderman Hotel, and Old Dutch Inn) marks the end of an era when this site served as a gathering place for legions of students, families and relaxation seeker.”
The Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor is sponsoring a one-day bus trip along the Lincoln Highway from Schellsburg to Gettysburg and back on June 26. Departure from Shawnee State Park will be 8:30 am, return by 8 pm.
Jean Bonnet Tavern along the Lincoln Highway west of Bedford.
The deluxe motor coach trip will be narrated by Dr. Fred Gantz, an adjunct faculty member at several area colleges who knows the route well and will share little-known facts about the country’s first coast-to-coast route.
In addition to photo opportunities at two roadside giants and five Lincoln Highway murals, bus guests will be treated to a lunch buffet at the 1815 Inn at Herr Ridge, where the Battle of Gettysburg began in the fields around the inn. The tour will then catch Neil Simon’s “45 Seconds from Broadway” matinee at the Totem Pole Playhouse. This is not community theater, but live professional theater. Dinner in historic McConnellsburg. Cost for meals, transportation, show, and lots of LH history is $110.
For information or reservations visit www.LHHC.org or call 724-238-9030.
Click the map above for a full-size view of the Lincoln Highway.
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Click the Greetings book below to purchase the ultimate guide to the history and route of the Lincoln Highway!
Another fun book! The Ship Hotel: A Grand View along the Lincoln Highway recalls the greatest roadside attraction along the coast-to-coast road.
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