Lincoln Highway News

Mountain House gets new owners, historic sign

September 5, 2008

The California chapter of the Lincoln Highway Association reports that Michael Kaelin and Gary Kinst presented a new Historic Lincoln Highway sign to the new owners of the Mountain House, Josie Alvarez and her mother Sara Pina. Sara hopes they can restore the roadhouse to its splendor of 1880-1925, the dates of the original resort being built and its burning. Below, Michael presents the sign to Sara and Josie.

This is the Mountain House in 1910 – click the image to see it larger:

The Mountain House is at the east end of Livermore/Altamont Pass in Alameda County at 16784 W Grantline Road, 4 miles W of Tracy and 6 miles E of Altamont Summit. Its origins stretch back to the gold rush days and are detailed in the July 2008 issue of The Traveler, the chapter’s newsletter. Stop in, have a drink, and say hi to Josie and Sara.

Tags: Altamont CA, California, historic highway sign, old roadhouse, Tracy CA
Posted in highways, history, roadside, signs | Leave a Comment »

Book explores Lincoln Highway in New Jersey

September 4, 2008

Al Pfingstl, LHA NJ Chapter Director, has just completed Sixty-Three Miles of History: The Lincoln Highway in New Jersey. Al says it took him a year to compile, edit, format, and print the book.

“This endeavor was at the urging of my wife, after the passing of my dog ‘Winter’ who was my best friend, research assistant, and traveling partner along the Lincoln Highway. We both traveled on and visited sites as far west as Bedford, PA.”

We’ll let you know when the book, published by Winter Haven Publishing, is available for purchase.

Tags: highway history, Lincoln Highway, New Jersey
Posted in highways, history, signs, transportation, travel | 1 Comment »

"Walking America The Lincoln Way" to start soon

September 3, 2008

LHA member Dennis Crowley plans to walk across America on the Lincoln Highway. From 1998 through 2005 he walked and worked his way across America from Chicago to California on Route 66. He now calls the effort Cross Roads, “a single purpose and a simple message. By promoting America’s historic highways Cross Roads seeks to call attention to our country’s Christian heritage. The purpose for covering these highways on foot is to make the statement that America needs to return to and walk in her spiritual “‘old paths.'”

LHA director Jay Banta, also of Fish Springs National Wildlife Refuge in Utah, wrote:

I look forward to hosting Dennis (and providing a shower!) when he arrives here at Fish Springs and I hope that others will provide him support as well. While we all have slightly different motives for ‘loving’ the highway, it is that passion that binds us and I think that Dennis and his quest can bring some great publicity to the Lincoln. I don’t think he has posted his schedule on the web but I know his first stint will take him from Lincoln Park to Sacramento in September of this year. He plans a Sacramento to Reno stretch in May of 2009 and then a push all the way across NV in the fall of 2009. His Utah and Wyoming crossing is planned for 2010.

Visit www.walkingamessage.com to learn more about “Walking America The Lincoln Way.”

Tags: Christian message, Route 66, Utah, walking for a purpose
Posted in highways, lodging, travel | 1 Comment »

Queneaus + markers = quite an 80th anniversary

September 2, 2008

Last summer, we honored Bernie Queneau here at the Heinz History Center with a proclamation from the mayor of Pittsburgh and the LHA. That same day, PBS producer Rick Sebak launched the filming of his LH special by capturing Bernie’s remarks about traveling the Lincoln Highway in 1928 (below, in front of his 16-year-old self holding the CA flag).

Bernie — now 96 years old — is the Lincoln Highway’s most prestigious ambassador, having been on the Boy Scout safety tour of 1928, which also served to promote the Lincoln Highway and the forthcoming marking of the coast-to-coast road with concrete posts/markers.

Yesterday, Rick and crew met Bernie and wife Esther, herself a former president of the LHA. It was 80 years to the day that Boy Scouts across the US fanned out to plant the concrete posts into the ground at corners and main intersections along the Lincoln. Rick recounts it best himself….

We had a great day on the Lincoln Highway with Esther and Bernie Queneau. I realized it was 80 years since Bernie made his cross-country promotional tour for the Lincoln Highway. Meanwhile, we tried to agree on a day when we could go for a ride, and today, Monday, Labor Day, was the only day when Bob and Glenn and I were all available as well as Esther and Bernie.

Then in Hanoverton, when we pulled to look at the replica marker, Esther mentioned that the markers had been erected on the same day, September 1, 1928. That was 80 years ago today! By chance, we were observing the 80th anniversary of the concrete posts with a drive into Ohio. It was glorious.

We actually had great luck all day. We met Bernie and Esther at the Teapot in Chester, WV, at 10 AM, and while getting a few shots, a car pulled over and Susan Badgley who helps take care of the landmark got out and offered to show us inside. How could we pass up the opportunity? Susan’s mother remembered the pot back 65 years.

Susan’s husband Tom is a toll taker on the Newell Bridge, and she offered us some free tickets to make several crossings, trying to get some shots of Esther and Bernie crossing the river into Ohio. [That’s Bernie below driving his Buick.]

We ended the day driving back and forth on Baywood Street west of Minerva. What a beautiful old stretch of red brick road! We thought we had driven into an Edward Hopper painting. Several nice old painted markers on telephone poles, and two quick interviews with our subjects. They are amazing.

Above: Rick Sebak photographed Bernie Queneau driving the LH via Baywood Street in eastern Ohio – CLICK to see it larger.

Tags: Boy Scout safety tour in 1928, brick roadways, Chester WV, giant teapot, highway markers, Ohio, roadside attraction, West Virginia
Posted in highways, history, Road trip, roadside, signs, travel | 1 Comment »

Throttler mag drives the Lincoln Highway in Iowa

September 1, 2008

The July 2008 issue of Throttler Motorcycle Magazine had an article about motorcycling the Lincoln Highway through Iowa. I contributed the images and Craig Ruegsegger wrote the story.

For more information, contact President & Publisher Roderick Kabel at roderick@throttlermagazine.com or visit www.throttlermagazine.com/.

Tags: Iowa, motorcycle tour of old highway, motorcycles
Posted in highways, Road trip, travel | 1 Comment »

Picking top 5 Lincoln Highway sites not so easy

August 29, 2008

In response to our story about PBS producer Rick Sebak filming at the Shoe House, good friend Jess asked what were the top 5 Lincoln Highway sites in PA mentioned by LHA director Mindy Crawford? Glad you asked!

1. Grandview Point, site of Ship Hotel, between Bedford and Ligonier
2. The Shoe House, York
3. Dunkle’s Gulf, Bedford
4. Lincoln Motor Court, Mann’s Choice
5. Poquessing Creek Bridge, near Langhorne
6. Dutch Haven, Lancaster

Yep, six! Mindy said couldn’t bear to leave out any of them.

If I had to cut one, it would be Grandview Point, even though I’m writing a book about it and the Ship Hotel there (due out Spring 2010). But if I could replace it, I’d go for Mister Ed’s Elephant Museum between Chambersburg and Gettysburg — Rick is not as enthusiastic about it, but for me it’s a rare throwback to old-time museum and candy shops. And I’d plead to group two in Bedford and add the Coffee Pot to Dunkle’s since it’s just down West Pitt Street.

When Rick filmed me in Pittsburgh, he asked me about my top 5 around the city. Hmm, I think they were:
1. Lincoln bronze statue, Wilkinsburg
2. Peppi’s Diner, Wilkinsburg/Pittsburgh line
3. Gulf building, art deco skyscraper, downtown
4. Manchester Bridge abutment, North Side, next to Heinz Field
5. Yellow brick road, Glenfield

OK Jess, you have two weeks — can you see them all? Maybe we’d better just make a lunch run to Peppi’s!

How about the top 5 must-see LH sites in the US? Dunkle’s must be one, and maybe the nearby Lincoln Motor Court too. It’s tough but I can pick three more (two of them also very close to each other in the Midwest). Send your top 5 and we’ll gather them into a post next week.

Tags: Bedford PA, Coffee Pot building, Diner, Dutch Haven, highway landmarks, Lincoln Highway, PBS show, Pittsburgh, roadside giants, Ship Hotel
Posted in highways, history, Road trip, roadside, travel | 4 Comments »

Austin, Nevada, church restored, open for tours

August 28, 2008

Jan Morrison sent a story from Preservation magazine about the church she and others in tiny Austin, Nevada, have been restoring. Work so far has taken four years and $353,000 in state grants. The town of 300 was once a booming mining town but is now one of the few outposts in the state along the Lincoln Highway (aka US 50 or “the loneliest road in America”). It increasingly looks to tourism for economic revival.

“The goal,” resident Jan Morrison says of restoring St. Augustine’s church, in Austin, Nev., “is not to make it look brand new, but to look like it’s 140 years old.” To be exact, the long-vacant church, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, turns 142 this year. It sports a new steel roof and granite support wall that fend off further decay without altering its original Gothic Revival and Italianate design.

But while form remains, function will change. When Morrison bought the building in 2004 from the Reno Diocese for $26,000, she formed the nonprofit St. Augustine’s Cultural Center, envisioning a venue for hosting conferences, art performances, weddings, family reunions and other events….

Morrison isn’t the town’s only active preservationist and booster. Restorations are also planned for the local Masonic Hall and an engine house that once served the Nevada Central Railroad. The Austin Historical Society recently opened a new museum, and local merchants received a state grant to spruce up some of the main street storefronts with a historic town square look

Tags: Austin Nevada, Catholic church restoration, historic church restoration, Loneliesst Road, US 50
Posted in highways, history, travel | Leave a Comment »

Sylvan Corners gets a Lincoln Highway marker

August 27, 2008

Gary Kinst sent these photos of Auburn Boulevard in Sylvan Corners, California, showing a new Lincoln Highway commemorative sign. When the corner was redeveloped, a US 40 sign was incorporated into the architecture but nothing to reflect the LH, so efforts were taken to rectify that and a new LH sign is prominently displayed.

Tags: California, old highway markers, Sylvan Corners CA
Posted in highways, history, signs | 1 Comment »

LH cartoon shows Pittsburgh-WV rerouting: why?

August 26, 2008

Fellow author and blogger Jason Togyer writes that while digging up material about his forthcoming book on the G.C. Murphy Company, he spotted this cartoon in the Friday, Oct. 17, 1930, Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph.

The reference here is to the rerouting of the Lincoln Highway through West Virginia, changing the route west of Pittsburgh, PA. The original routing along the Ohio River to East Liverpool, Ohio, had long been congested and waiting to be bypassed. But that’s the odd thing — the LH came through Pittsburgh in 1913. The LHA board of directors officially changed the route in December 1927 to what was named US 30 through Crafton, Clinton, and Imperial, into through Chester, WV, and across the Ohio River to East Liverpool). So why was a cartoonist welcoming the road to the city in 1930?

Posted in highways, history, signs, transportation | 1 Comment »

Great Race great-grandson gives great talk in IL

August 25, 2008

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