The Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor has announced that the first of the Roadside Giants student sculptures has been installed along the Lincoln Highway west of Ligonier, Pennsylvania. The Roadside Giants program encourages students from vocational and technical schools along the Lincoln Highway (US 30 in PA) to design and create sculptures that will line the road. They are named for the larger-than-life buildings and statues that are used to attract travelers to stop and spend some time and money, documented in such esteemed books as Roadside Giants — yes, written by me and my wife Sarah.
The first Giant, from the Eastern Westmoreland Career & Technology Center, is a replica 1940s Bennett Gas Pump at the future site of the Lincoln Highway Experience, a welcome center and attraction in Ligonier Township. It’s at the intersection of US 30W and Route 259, near the Idlewild Park entrance. Ligonier Livingalso wrote a story about it.
Four other schools will also soon install giants:
• Somerset County Career & Technology Center designed a vintage Bicycle Built for Two
• Bedford County Technical Center students created an oversized quarter including a profile of Washington
• Franklin County Career & Technology Center built a replica 1921 Selden Apple Truck like the ones used to haul produce at Chambersburg’s orchards.
• Central Westmoreland Career & Technology Center wanted to design a Lincoln Highway-era figure, so they chose a Packard Car with Driver.
“I love art and education,” said Olga Herbert, Executive Director of the LHHC. The Roadside Giants of the Lincoln Highway project combined the two, and involved the community. It will create another great photo op for all Lincoln Highway road trips this summer.”
A new mailer/flyer details plans for the museum building being planned by the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor in western Pennsylvania. The Lincoln Highway Experience will be the largest and most prominent site documenting the Lincoln Highway.
To be located just west of Ligonier, Pa., the Lincoln Highway Experience will tell the story of the highway both in the state and on a national level. Interpretive exhibits will focus on the years 1912-1940 but the emphasis will be on what is still along the corridor, encouraging visitors to get out and drive the road.
The building itself was designed by Venturi Scott Brown Associates, familiar to roadside fans for their pioneering work, including publication of Learning From Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form (1972, revised 1977) by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour. The 10,000 s.f interior was handled by Maude Group and Kissiloff Associates and will include two films.
The LHHC has helped secure and administer grants for dozens of regional projects and is now launching its own capital campaign for the Experience. Donors at the $2,500 level will bceome members of The Lincoln Circle, with naming opportunities. The LHHC was designated in 1995 to promote economic development through tourism. Visit www.lhhc.org for more information about the Corridor.
The long-abandoned town of Clarksville, just outside of El Dorado Hills, California, is set to be cleared and developed in the next couple years. The town boasts one of the longest sections of original Lincoln Highway along the Pioneer Branch between Sacramento and Carson City, Nevada.
Philip Wood, writing in the El Dorado Hills Telegraph. reported that the owner will be developing the property this year, though preserving parts for a museum to honor Clarksville’s history. Wood and Don Chaddock got a chance to photograph the land that lies east of Sacramento. Those are Wood’s photos here.
More exciting, a follow-up article in the Folson Telegraph announces that the public will have one last chance to visit the town that time forgot thanks to members of the town’s historical society.
Betty January, president of the Clarksville Region Historical Society, said Ken Wilkenson, one of the property owners, worked out a deal to hold their annual Clarksville Day at the site on May 9. A large barn that was also once the schoolhouse will be used for the celebration.
January said Clarksville was founded around 1849-50, because of the nearby Mormon Tavern, and quickly became a commercial and social center for the area, eventually home to a few hundred people. The road dates to that period. Wilkenson says the roadway will be preserved.
Only about dozen structures remain but the town once had a Wells Fargo building, general store, school, and hotels. Decline came when the Folsom-to-Shingle Springs branch of the railroad bypassed the town, and really came when US 50 was rerouted, cutting off the town so that it could not even support a gas station. The last resident left in 1952, and when a developer bought 11,000 acres in the 1960s, he renamed the area El Dorado Hills. The ghost town again has one resident — in a new house built atop the site of the general store after it burned down.
Cars will be able to drive the Lincoln Highway during Clarksville Day. The event will feature vintage cars and other activities for the public such as gold panning, and The Pony Express Riders will stage a re-mount.
Craig Harmon, director of the Lincoln Highway Museum online site that participated in this week’s inaugural parade, announced his second annual Lincoln & Liberty Global Essay Contest. The 2009 contest happens to coincide with this year’s Lincoln Bicentennial Celebration. Categories for the contest include grade school (K-6), middle school (7-8); high school (9-12), college, middle age (age 18-59),and senior (60+).
Deadline for essay entries is midnight February 9 with the winners announced on Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, Feb. 12, following the National Lincoln birthday celebration at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
The grand prize winner’s name will be placed on a large Lincoln bust that will serve as a “rotating trophy.” First place winners will receive a commemorative Obama license plate made specially for the Inauguration and a certificate suitable for framing. Certificates will also be issued for second place, third place and honorable mention.
Following up on my post earlier this week, if you’re looking for the Lincoln Highway section of the Inaugural parade next week, Craig Harmon tells me they’ll be in the 3rd section – Navy about half way back.
Lincoln Highway Museum director Harmon notes the event corresponds perfectly with the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth, hence the theme of his contingent, “Lincoln is the Key – A New Birth of Freedom.” A Lincoln reencator will be atop his 1968 Maxim fire engine, holding a Liberty Key presented to the US by General Lafayette in 1825.
Commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Transcontinental Motor Convoy will be vehicles and the director from the Wheels Through Time Motorcycle Museum of Asheville, NC, and sons of two men who were crucial in leading that convoy on motorcycles. Also along will be actor Mickey Rooney, who sang a Lincoln Highway-related song in his 1939 movie Babes In Arms (he’s been to every inauguration since 1933!!). Marching along will be 38 soldiers carrying state flags from 17 states crossed by the Lincoln Highway or an Offical Feeder. They will be dressed in authentic WWI uniforms rushed for the event by Wendy Partridge, a Hollywood costume designer from Calgary, Canada.
Jennifer Vogelsong wrote an interesting piece for the York Daily Record/Sunday News about the search for authentic experiences in Gettysburg and Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Much of the public face is found along the Lincoln Highway/US 30 but she finds that the best places are a block or two away or along the back roads. She was inspired by the December issue of National Geographic Traveler that ranked the two destinations among the most important historic places on Earth — and fourth worst when it comes to sustainable tourism, ie how authentically they preserve the past, manage tourism, and withstand development.
At the Mennonite Information Center on US 30, director Jeff Landis advises “If you see a sign with the word “Amish” in it, it probably isn’t.” Still, at The Amish Experience, with billboard ads and an F/X Theater, “employee Ginny Reese said it’s pretty authentic, and an appealing option for visitors who don’t want to drive the back roads for the real thing: ‘They can’t find it or they don’t know where to go and what they’re looking for.'”
Read more of Jennifer’s travels around these two areas and York in her blog Explorer’s Backpack.
Two long-lost Lincoln Highway markers were unearthed recently in California. They are two of the concrete posts planted along the road in 1928 as a final memorial to Lincoln and the road named for him. LHA president Bob Dieterich explains:
I got an email from Lee Hollifield saying he had two “Lincoln Highway posts.” He didn’t want them resold, but wanted them put on display and his father-in-law, Ray Helm, given credit as the donor. Everybody agreed that the California Chapter of the LHA should take possession. Norm Root and Lloyd Johnson and I drove up to Camino (on the Pioneer Branch of the LH near US 50) to see them. Beside his driveway were the two posts, barely recognizable because of all the red volcanic soil that had leached into the concrete.
Ray had half-interest in a salvage yard and when he and his partner dissolved the business about 20 years ago, they each took what they wanted. There were four posts; we think two of them ended up at the entrance to the El Dorado County museum at the county fairgrounds in Placerville. Ray took the other two home and laid them beside his driveway. Over the years they literally sunk into the ground. Lee dug them out of the ground and they decided to donate them somewhere. They are now at Norm Root’s house waiting restoration. Both are cracked, but Norm can perform miracles on concrete.
At our last California chapter meeting, we voted that one of them should end up in the Folsom History Museum. Folsom is also on the Pioneer branch and the museum is a logical place to display them while being protected from vandalism.
The top photo shows Norm Root and Lloyd Johnson standing by the markers as we found them. The second photo shows the markers being loaded into the back of Norm Root’s Suburban.
The third photo shows the posts being pressure washed in Norm’s driveway.
You can also read about it from the donor’s perspective HERE, and here is one some of his images:
During the Geneva Concours d’Elegance car show this past weekend in Illinois, Jeff Mahr recalled the incredible story of his great-grandfather, George Schuster, winning driver of the 1908 New York to Paris Great Race. His presentation, “Bandits, Guns and Automobiles” recalls the saga as he heard it as a child combined with ongoing research. The race followed much of what became the Lincoln Highway in 1913 from northern Indiana to the Great Salt Lake. Jeff has a web site devoted to the race and his own work, with images such as the one below showing Jeff with the winning Thomas Flyer:
LHA director Kay Shelton attended the talk and sent back a glowing review:
Jeff Mahl got a standing ovation at the Geneva History Center on August 23. He described how he listened to his great-grandpa’s stories. When he was 14 and had to write a history assignment in school, that is when he realized how famous and important his great-grandpa was. Then he really paid attention to all of the stories, and thought they were better than anything on TV at the time. George Schuster lived until he was 99, he still shoveled snow at age 98, and still had a drivers’ license when he was 95.
Then, Mr. Mahl began his talk by putting on a driving jacket and sitting in a chair, and told the story in first person, like he was Schuster himself, with a PowerPoint. Schuster found out the day before the race that his boss wanted him to be in it and had very little preparation. E.R. Thomas chose him because he was a mechanic.
There will be a documentary out sometime in 2009 on the “Greatest Auto Race on Earth.” It will be released in Canada, Germany, France, and the U.S. He is a very nice man and if anyone gets a chance to have him as a speaker I highly recommend him. There was a $25 charge for the ticket — they brought him in conjunction with the very fancy annual auto show Geneva holds (Bentleys, Lamborghinis, Bugattis, Astin Martins, etc.). He signed the 1966 book I found [see below] and told me that it was very rare. His picture is in it as a little boy. He also re-published The Great Automobile Race: New York to Paris (originally published by the Thomas Motor Company) in 1992 with his own introduction. There is no date on the original book but it has to be 1912 or earlier as that is when the Thomas Motor Co. went defunct
I also have the book – an incredible, enjoyable journey:
Scott Berka, city clerk of Colo, Iowa, sent some great photos of the RAGBRAI® — The Des Moines Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa. Yesterday (day 4 of the week-long event), the bicyclists traveled the Lincoln Highway from Ames to State Center. He snapped the photos at the Reed/Niland Corner in Colo about 9:30 a.m.. They show the restored gas station, cafe, and area near the just-reopened motel. CLICK each one to see it larger.
RAGBRAI was started in 1973 as a 6-day ride (not a race) across Iowa by two Register columnists; it’s still planned and coordinated by the newspaper and is now hosted by the Register’s front-page cartoonist, Brian Duffy. The Des Moines Register naturally has numerous daily updates, including news that tacks strewn near Nevada, Iowa, caused at least 100 flat tires. Learn more by visiting the RAGBRAI® site or read a brief story at at WHO-TV.
Noontime Tuesday saw cross-country motorcyclists Buddy and Bob pull into Pittsburgh, fresh from a drive across Ohio the previous day. Actually, they stopped at my workplace, the Senator John Heinz History Center. Greeting them too were PBS Producer Rick Sebak (below, middle) and cameraman Bob Lubomski, filming a program about the Lincoln Highway. (Click here to see it larger on Flickr – once there, click All Sizes above the photo.)
There were photos all around, including some of me on one of their Piaggio cycles. I’m not sure I could trade 4 wheels for a cycle, even one with 3 wheels, but it would certainly offer a more intimate experience with the roadscape. We swapped LH stories and then it was off to lunch. Here’s a very short video clip of them riding away from town on Smallman Street.
The History Center is at the eastern edge of Pittsburgh’s downtown and at the western edge of the Strip District, named becasue it’s a thin strip of land along the river. It’s been home to mills and rails and workers and churches but in recent decades it’s known for prduce stands, and more recently, restaurants and nightclubs. Here’s Bob L getting a shot at Penn Mac, a great place to buy cheese, olives, and other Italian specialties.
Then we headed to Enrico Biscotti. If there’s one thing photos and videos can’t do justice to, it’s the aroma of fresh-baked biscotti emerging from the oven. Lunch there is in a tiny alley that really feels like you’re in a European cafe.
It was over all too soon for me since I had to return to work, but the 4 transcontinentalists were heading eastward in search of LH landmarks. I recommended the Abe Lincoln statue in Wilkinsburg and the tiny iron bridge in Turtle Creek in the shadow of the massive Westinghouse Bridge. I loaned them my PA Lincoln Highway guide in hopes it would help them follow the route. And before we left, we got more photos: from left, Bob, Brian, Bob L, Buddy, and Rick.
Read about their further adventures that day HERE.
Click the map above for a full-size view of the Lincoln Highway.
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The first Giant, from the Eastern Westmoreland Career & Technology Center, is a replica 1940s Bennett Gas Pump at the future site of the Lincoln Highway Experience, a welcome center and attraction in Ligonier Township. It’s at the intersection of US 30W and Route 259, near the Idlewild Park entrance. Ligonier Living also wrote a story about it.
Lincoln Highway News 