On Tuesday, Chicago Public Radio’s Gianofer Fields reported from her LH trip that her reception at the Harrison County Historical Village and Iowa Welcome Center along the Lincoln Highway in western Iowa was not very welcoming. She has even subtitled that day’s entry, “What happens when the welcoming center isn’t so welcoming?”:
FIELDS: Tell me about this place that we are standing in.
HEIM [center employee]: Well, this is the welcome center that we are standing in.
I suppose that I should have taken that massive silence as a sign that the welcome center lady wasn’t in the mood for company. When I saw the old cabin perched on a small hill by the highway; I thought it had, “Stop here roadside attraction,” written all over it. So I did in hopes of learning more about it.
HEIM: Well, it has a wealth of information and antiques in it and it takes about an hour to go through, self guided usually.
Did I just get the bums rush? Clearly, I am on my own.
Above: Half the operational expenses for the village/welcome center are covered by sales in the Iowa Products Store and village admission fees.
I asked center coordinator Kathy Dirks about the two things that seemed to bother Ms. Fields—the lack of enthusiasm and the self-guided tour. Here is her response:
I wish I would have been here and that I could be here everyday to guarantee every person’s experience that steps through our front door would be stellar and involve the highest level of customer service. Unfortunately, it’s not humanly possible because we are open 361 days a year. So on many weekends and other days when I’m unable to be here due to meetings, vacations, etc., we pay some of our volunteers to man the facility. Almost all are elderly because the hours are limited and the pay low due to our limited budget. (My opinion would be almost all of them would be totally intimidated by a surprise microphone interview as well.)…
Not to make any excuses for what happened because there are none, but it can also be somewhat of a challenge to work at this particular facility because of the volume of knowledge the volunteers/workers are expected to know about Iowa – from everything tourism-related, to agriculture, to state laws, to about anything else that could cross your mind. I’ve worked here 13 years and still get questions I’ve never been asked before. I would have hoped though that everyone working here could have answered questions about this facility. I see much more intensive training needs to happen.
Our goal at the Harrison County Historical Village and Welcome Center has always been to supply the best service possible. I believe that on many occasions we do succeed in achieving that goal based on comments from customers and the amount of repeat business we receive. I absolutely hate when it doesn’t happen. Unfortunately, I can’t repeat Gianofer Fields experience here and make everything perfect. I can only learn from it and do whatever possible so it isn’t repeated….
We only offer self-guided tours on a regular basis and state that in our brochure. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough business, nor large enough income, to offer guided tours on a regular basis. The facility sits on 17 acres and the museum is in five different buildings covering about 4 1/2 acres. On many days, we only have one person that works the entire facility – beginning people on museum tours, answering welcome center questions, waiting on people in the gift shop, sweeping the floor, etc. If I had been here by myself, I would not have been able to give Gianofer Fields a guided tour of the museum either without locking the door to the welcome center/gift shop.
It’s obvious Ms. Dirks cares an awful lot about customer satisfaction while struggling with limited staff and resources. And Ms. Fields (who has not responded to my emails, though the station’s Director of Communications did one time) would probably understand these points too if she had known or been told in a more positive manner. Maybe Ms. Fields can return some day and give us all an update.
Waymarking is like a scavenger hunt for interesting places. Using a GPS locator, waymarking not only means marking a location using latitude and longitude coordinates, but categorizing it and adding unique information for others to learn about it. That’s why those of us who only see the results online can still follow along in the fun. There are more than 70 Lincoln Highway markers of all sorts on Waymarking.com, from murals to brick monuments in Ohio, and especially the 1928 concrete posts (originals and reproductions). Waymarkers post an image or two at each location and supply a description. Here are some nice examples, all used with permission.
This marker painted on a pole just east of Central City, Nebraska. was located by plainsdrifter358, aka Barbara and Bill.
The marker below comemmorates the 1927 concrete bridge that carried the LH/Delphos-Upper Sandusky Road over the Ottawa River near Gomer, Ohio, taken by Stephen Shepherd.
The interesting monument below, probably overlooked by LH fans, was found at 1600 Plainfield Road in Joliet by a member cldisme.
According to the plaque at its base, this
life-size cold cast bronze sculpture of a 1915 Joliet road worker, seated on a hand-cut ceramic mosaic column, represents the historic Lincoln Highway and the birth of our modern day highway system. Also, included in the mosaic is an image of Abraham Lincoln medallion. The sculpture is dedicated to the men and women of the Will-Grundy Counties Building Trades Council and the construction companies of the Contractors Association of Will & Grundy Counties who make our roads possible.
On July 1, 1913, a group of automobile enthusiasts and industry officials led by Carl Fisher, created the Lincoln Highway Association (LHA), “to procure the establishment of a continuous improved highway from the Atlantic to the Pacific, open to the lawful traffic of all description without toll charges” and to be a lasting memorial to our 16 th president, Abraham Lincoln. Prior to the Lincoln Highway, the existing roads were nothing more than dirt paths, which became impossible to traverse even after the lightest rain. There were very few filling stations along the proposed route, few places to eat, and even fewer places to find lodging.
Since highway maps and signage did not exist, a uniform way of marking the highway became a necessity. A design was created that consisted of a concrete post, a blue arrow, and Lincoln’s image on a medallion. On July 8, 1928, the Boy Scouts of America installed the concrete sign posts next to 3,100 miles of roadway at all important turns and junction points from New York to San Francisco.
Check out the site for dozens more Lincoln Highway markers along (and sometimes far from) the road.
Colo, Iowa, city clerk Scott Berka told me today that construction is progressing well at the Colo Motel, part of a wonderful “one-stop” restoration project in central Iowa. Painting is done and carpenters will start trimming next week, but furniture was just ordered today so it looks like it will be the first of the year before the motel reopens. Sounds like it will be ready in time for Springtime road trips!
Chicago Public Radio’s Gianofer Fields is traveling the Lincoln Highway through Iowa. On her way to the western end of the state, she stopped in Eldon (65 miles due south of Belle Plaine, a favorite stop for LH travelers) to visit the house made famous by artist Grant Wood. His 1930 American Gothic painting, on display at the Art Institute of Chicago, is one of the most parodied, portraying a farmer and his daughter (usually thought to be his wife—though each were models and never met) in front of a white farm house with a distinctive upper window. Visit the CPR web page for a transcript or listen to the audio version. When Gianofer arrives at the western edge of Iowa, she makes her next entry at the Iowa Visitors Center (above, from its website) and its 1853 log cabin, located between Logan and Missouri Valley. She gets a less-than-enthusiastic welcome (not good news for LH boosters). She then heads northeast to the nearby non-profit Museum of Religious Arts along US 30 just south of Logan and has a friendlier experience, though as she finds, it is only Christian exhibits despite the more inclusive name.Below (from the MRA website) is one of its King of Kings displays: life-size wax figurines that portray nine Biblical scenes such as the annunciation, the nativity, Palm Sunday, the last supper, the crucifixion, and resurrection. They were sculpted by Leone Chaney in the 1960s for Sunken Gardens in St. Petersburg, Florida, then in the late 1990s, they were moved to the Museum of Religious Arts.
Many towns along the Lincoln Highway woke up to severe weather today, including snow and wind in the East and Midwest.
The image above shows cars struggling to climb snowy Donner Summit about 1930. This was of course where the Donner party of emigrants got caught in the early snows of early November 1846. An excellent recounting of their story that puts the reader there is The Donner Party Chronicles: A Day-by-Day Account of a Doomed Wagon Train, 1846-47 by Frank Mullen Jr. The well-researched book makes it simple and intriguing to follow their journey through the use of maps, diary excerpts, images of artifacts, modern photography, and archaeological debates.
While it will only be the 20s the next few days where I am in PA, it’s will reach the 50s in Truckee, the area where many from the Donner party camped to wait out the winter. You can check my web site’s LH Weather page to see conditions at a dozen locales from coast to coast.
The S.S. Grand View Ship Hotel was perhaps the best-known, most-visited landmark along the 3,300+ miles of Lincoln Highway. The famous roadside attraction was 17 miles west of Bedford, Pennsylvania, but unfortunately burned in 2001. With my Lincoln Highway Companion book ready for the editors, I’m starting on my next book, a fun look at the Ship. I first wrote about the Ship in 1989 and have been gathering information, recollections, and photos since then.
People took lots of snapshots there, and though they probably took movies, few of those surface, so it’s exciting to see this rare film from 1972! (Total time 3:32) Roger Shaulis shoots out the back window as they speed east on the Lincoln Highway through the Seven Mile Stretch, passing coal trucks. About 45 seconds in, they arrive at the Ship and go to the deck for the view and some goofing. The family jumps on the Turnpike for the final minute, passing through three tunnels on their way to New Jersey.
The folks who sent this card in 1951 from the Weeden Motor Hotel wrote, “Not many motels along this route so far. Lucky we stopped when we did, got the last one and the next one is 25 miles…. When we got to Dwight [Illinois, on Route 66] Randy wanted to know if we were in Calif.”
The original Lincoln Highway went through downtown; this was on a US 30 bypass (itself now bypassed). The card says the motel was 3 miles south and 1/2 mile west of town. I think it later became the Weeden Holiday Motel with a bigger c. 1970 sign at 2569 240th Street/Iowa Avenue. Any readers know its history? Or about Lloyd’s next door, which claimed to be Iowa’s most beautiful restaurant?
The Charles Weever Cushman Collection at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, consists of ten cubic feet of materials, including 2,200 b/w negatives and prints. Just three of those cubic feet are slides, but what a collection — more than 14,400 color Kodachrome slides shot from 1938 to 1969. Cushman’s photos have been digitized through Indiana University’s Digital Library Program and the Indiana University Archives and are now online.
An amateur photographer, most of Cushman’s images are scenic, many are from such countries as from Lebanon, Germany, Austria, England, and Mexico. There are few roadside or industrial sites, but roads and cars do make it into many of the slides. Here are some from along the Lincoln Highway or close to it—click the links to see larger views.
A clear day in Salt Lake City, 1958, looking north on State Street toward the capitol.
There’s lots else to see plus essays about Cushman and his collection. Photos reprinted here with the kind permission of Indiana University, Office of University Archives & Records Management, with special thanks to Curator Bradley D. Cook.
One of my favorite stops along the Lincoln Highway is Fort Cody Trading Post in North Platte, Nebraska. Since moving closer to I-80, it’s now a few blocks south of US 30 through town, though the original LH actually followed the Gothenburg Stairstep that came into town from the south on Locust (now Jeffers) Street, so Fort Cody actually overlooks the 1913 LH.
The Henline family has operated numerous businesses along the Lincoln Highway and elsewhere, so they are preparing a booklet detailing their history. Leigh Henline told me, “We are having a company make us a 24 page souvenir book to sell. We are hoping it will be ready in February. It will tell a little bit about the history of Fort Cody, a bit on the Sioux Trading Post and Buffalo Bill Trading Post. Some on the museum, LOTS on the little Buffalo Bill Wild West show (he took hundreds of photos!), and some on the Muffler Man! We are very excited about all this. This guy is also doing a bunch of photo magnets for us on the little Wild West show, due any day.”
Teen-aged Chuck Henline points to the new Muffler Man Indian in the 1970s.
Here are the places the family has operated along the Lincoln Highway:
• Sioux Trading Post, Ogallala, 1952-1969.
• Buffalo Bill Trading Post, US 30 W, North Platte, 1950-1954.
• Fort Cody, US 30 W, North Platte, 1963-1969.
• Present Fort Cody, I-80 Hwy 83, North Platte, 1968 to present.
Chuck Henline crafted an animated display of their Sioux Trading Post.
The family also operated the Wigwam in Atlanta, Nebraska, and the Seminole Trading Post and Indian Village near Miami. They have some photos displayed on their office walls:
I’ll be writing more about their roadside adventures soon, and will post an update when their booklet is published.
Click the map above for a full-size view of the Lincoln Highway.
Like this blog? You'll LOVE my books!Lincoln Highway Companion features detailed maps and places to eat and stay. Click the book to buy it on Amazon.
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.
And for those who LOVE diners, click the book below to purchase our completely updated guide to the history, geography, and food of Pennsylvania's Diners!
Colo, Iowa, city clerk Scott Berka told me today that construction is progressing well at the Colo Motel, part of a wonderful “one-stop” restoration project in central Iowa. Painting is done and carpenters will start trimming next week, but furniture was just ordered today so it looks like it will be the first of the year before the motel reopens. Sounds like it will be ready in time for Springtime road trips!
When Gianofer arrives at the western edge of Iowa, she makes her 
One of my favorite stops along the Lincoln Highway is 
Lincoln Highway News 