Some people still ask if my new book Lincoln Highway Companion has been published and I’m glad to say yes, it’s available. Below is a picture from A Ride Along the Lincoln Highway producer Rick Sebak of local friend Tom Weisbecker with the book at his Isaly’s dairy store in West View, north of Pittsburgh. (And if you haven’t been to Isaly’s lately, or ever, take a trip there this week: 448 Perrysville Ave/US 19, north of Pittsburgh.)
LHC list price is $26.95 and it’s available in bookstores — if not on the shelf, they can order it for you — or get it from Amazon at a discount price of $17.35. Or get one from Tom for $19.99 and enjoy a meal while you’re there.
• Update to recent murder of Lincoln Cafe owner: No word on the cafe itself in Belle Plaine, Iowa, but bond was set at $500,000 each for three people accused, and at a preliminary hearing yesterday, arraignment was set for August 13 in Iowa County District Court. According to the Cedar Rapids Gazette, “Marengo Police Chief Galen Moser has refused to release how Bailey died and the weapon used to kill him. Police did, however, release autopsy results last week that confirmed Bailey’s death was a homicide.” According to MPC Newspapers, “Bailey and Frei purchased Bailey’s Lincoln Café in Belle Plaine in 2006. The business has not kept regular hours the last year or so, with customers often finding notes on the door indicating the café was closed due to emergency or medical reasons. News of the killing has left the café’s customers reeling.”
• On Wednesday, September 2 at 1:30 p.m, Jan Shupert-Arick, past president of the Lincoln Highway Association and past national director of the Indiana LHA, will talk about the famous road at the Center for History in South Bend, Indiana. She is author of the recently-published book, The Lincoln Highway Across Indiana, and also guest curator for the Center for History’s exhibit, Appeal to Patriots: The Lincoln Highway. A tour of the exhibit is part of the program. Admission is $3 and reservations are required by August 31. For information, call (574) 235-9664 or visit www.centerforhistory.org/.
• Sue Barr writes that “My colleague Dr David Heathcote and I are academics in London and teach at the Architectural Association School of Architecture and Middlesex University. We are working on a book on the world history of motorways and will come to the U.S. in September to look at the Lincoln Highway.”Photo by Rick Sebak
The New-York Historical Society will open an exhibition, Lincoln and New York, on October 9, 2009. New York of course lays claim to the Eastern Terminus and a few blocks of the cross-country Lincoln Highway. The exhibition will trace the relationship between the man and the city; it will run through March 25, 2010.
The photo above showing Lincoln’s funeral procession also reportedly caught young Teddy Roosevelt at the window of his grandfather Cornelius Roosevelt’s house (the large house on the left). He and his brother Elliot are said to be the boys looking out the second floor window. The house sat on Broadway between 13th and 14th streets; it was replaced by the Roosevelt Building in 1894.
The New-York Historical Society is located at 170 Central Park West between 76th & 77th streets. For more information, visit www.nyhistory.org or call (212) 873-3400.
According to the Cedar Rapids Gazette, Curtis C. Bailey, co-owner of the Lincoln Cafe in Belle Plaine, Iowa, was murdered Sunday by his common-law wife and two other people, reportedly her son and his girlfriend. LHA director Van Becker sent the photo and alerts us that the story was reported yesterday on Cedar Rapids KCRG-TV 9 and this morning in the Gazette.
The retracing of the 1919 military convoy route made headlines at it crossed the U.S. the past month. The tour commemorated the 90th anniversary of the first transcontinental U.S. Army motor transport convoy, most of it along the Lincoln Highway. Some of the participants also posted updates. Marilyn Boots reported on her travels with Dennis in “Jezebel,” a Vietnam-era jeep that he restored.
Dennis is a former Army captain who served with the combat engineers, with one tour of duty in Vietnam. Their blog is bootsadventure.blogspot.com/ (also the source for these photos). He was maintenance officer for the convoy so his Jeep brought up the rear of the convoy. Marilyn was “chase lead,” responsible for seeing that civilian vehicles carrying family members of convoy participants stay on schedule.
Here is a comment from June 16, just a couple days after the launch:
Wow! The journey had been incredible so far and extremely busy. I just thought I could blog every evening! We’ve start with breakfasts at 6:30 and have not reached our hotel rooms until after 10 each night. Today is our first rest day, so I want to share some highlights. We are so filled up with memories already that we could stop now and be content.
And the end:
WE MADE IT!!! We all arrived safe and with NO BREAKDOWNS about 1:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Western Terminus of the Lincoln Highway on the edge of San Francisco, which overlooks the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Golden Gate Bridge to the east…. We have never been so grateful for police escorts! There were 32 motorcycle policemen helping us through the enormous amount of traffic over the Bay Bridge and through the hills of San Francisco…. Again, we were cheered on by waving crowds and lots of picture taking as we made the final climb to our destination.
A small segment of Lincoln Highway on the northeast border of Philadelphia is due for change next summer; whether that will affect an 18th century stone arch bridge remains to be seen. Here’s a scene and a video walk along the road and bridge by Rick Sebak when filming his PBS special, A Ride Along the Lincoln Highway.
Plans to fix up Benjamin Rush State Park, parallel to Roosevelt Boulevard/the Lincoln Highway, have languished for decades due to a city-state dispute about the improvements. But according to Philly.com, John W. Norbeck, director of the Bureau of State Parks, last week said he and City Councilman Brian O’Neill reached “an agreement in principle” during a June 30 meeting.
The parks director said last week that the state will proceed as planned to put out bids early next year and for work to commence by June 2010…. The design stipulates that Burling Avenue, a beat-up old city road that cuts through the park from Roosevelt Boulevard’s outer northbound lanes, will be removed and filled in along with another street [Byberry-Bensalem Road, aka the old Lincoln Highway] that can be seen only on maps.
Striking Burling Avenue and Byberry-Bensalem Road from the city’s street map had been a sticking point for years. O’Neill had maintained that city law bars building on a city street unless the street has been “vacated” by ordinance. Later, city zoning matters further complicated things….
When City Council reconvenes in the fall, the councilman said, he will introduce legislation that would erase the streets from city maps and also change the city’s passive recreation ordinance to accommodate the state’s plans for Rush.
The Bridger Valley Pioneerreported on last Wednesday’s dedication of the restored Black and Orange Cabins in Fort Bridger, Wyoming. The motel along the Lincoln Highway dates to the 1930s. Many Lincoln Highway fans visited the unrestored cabins at the 2008 LHA Evanston conference. The cabins, with carports, were an extension of the Rocheford Hotel in an attempt to serve travelers who wanted less formal accommodations. The event coincided with the passing through of the Military Vehicle Preservation Association’s re-enactment of the 1919 military convoy.
Randy Wagner, who provided the photos above, wrote, “The ribbon-cutting coincided with the arrival of the Military Convoy and some 250 folks attended. The contractor told me he was able to use abour 90 percent of the original building material. The registration office is a complete reconstruction as it was destroyed by fire some 20 years ago. They are not available to rent although a couple have been furnished (bed, dresser, chair, stove and not much else) and are open for inspection. More will be furnished as period furniture becomes available. The state doesn’t want to compete with the two small motels that struggle to stay in business in Fort Bridger.”
LHA director for Wyoming Shelly Horne reports on the day that MVPA leader “Terry Shellswell had invited some of us to join the convoy in Green River. When we got there he offered Joe Cox (a local LHA member) a ride with a retired Air Force Colonel in his jeep (above) and invited me to ride with him in his jeep with he and his wife at the head of the column. He asked my wife, Deann, to lead a small column down the interstate that was not able to travel the old road. We followed the LH from Green River to Little America, then picked it up again in Granger to Fort Bridger with a rest stop at Church Butte.” He spoke briefly at the Blakc and Orange Cabins “before the ribbon cutting (which appropriately was a tree branch cutting). The convoy was fed Buffalo Burgers and we were gone again. We picked up the LH east of Eagle Rock a few miles. As we were heading up the grade past Eagle Rock, I looked back at the convoy. It was strung out for several miles and was quite a sight.”
LHA director Kay Shelton alerted us that, for the couple million people with Hotmail accounts, logging out takes them right to the http://www.msn.com Web site and a few weeks ago the site had a link: “Forget 66: A Better Cross-Country Route” with a short article on the Lincoln Highway. It’s still available HERE.
The story by award-winning author Earl Swift advises “Forget Route 66. This here is our Main Street.” And “With a couple of weeks free, you can still take this curvy, low-speed cruise from end to end and, in the process, gain an understanding of just how big and varied and spectacular this country is.”
Van Becker sent news that two Iowa locations celebrated “96 Years on the Lincoln Highway” on June 13-14 with two amateur radio stations operating for two days from two historic one-stop locations. Above is Bev Becker, WØWDC, LHA life member and experienced amateur radio operator taking her first turn at the mic; following is Van’s report.
The Benton County Amateur Radio Club, KØKBX, put the restored Youngville Cafe on the air operating with three transmitters on the 20, 40 and 80 meter ham bands. This is the second year for this crew and practice sure helped the results! We had 12 operators rotating through one-hour stints at the microphone.
ABOVE: Youngville Cafe, 20 miles west of Cedar Rapids, Iowa on the Lincoln Highway. Inside, an original 1928 LH marker is on display.
The Ames Amateur Radio Club, WØYL, operated from Reed-Nyland Corner in Colo, Iowa. This group experienced a slow start while installing temporary antennas in the rain. This was the first year for this group and they had respectable results and lots of fun. They also had the comfort of a fully-operating cafe for refreshments.
ABOVE: Reed-Nyland gas station, Colo, Iowa, on the Lincoln Highway.
Together, we contacted over 1,000 different stations from coast to coast, quite a few Canadian stations, and even one fellow in Scotland!
The operators had a sheet of “talking points” and LH facts to help enlighten the over-the-air listeners. All the stations contacted will receive an impressive color confirmation certificate upon receipt of their QSL (confirmation) card. Each certificate will be accompanied by a Lincoln Highway Association brochure too.
On June 27th, your blogger here, Brian Butko, will present a program on the Lincoln Highway at Ligonier Valley Library, Ligonier, PA, which is also hosting a drive-in theater exhibit. The program starts at 11 am followed by discussion and a book signing that benefits the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor. Below is the Van-Del Drive-in, along the LH between Van Wert and Delphos, Ohio.
The library is on the Ligonier “diamond,” or square, at 120 W. Main Street / the Lincoln Highway. After the presentation I’ll be signing my latest book, Lincoln Highway Companion.
The book signing complements the exhibit, Movies, Motors, & Memories: Pennsylvania’s Drive-In Theaters, which includes photographs, artifacts, and memorabilia. Above is exhibit curator Jennifer Sopko at the drive-in I grew up attending, the former Woodland Drive-In, West Mifflin, PA.
Some of the items include a huge c. 1950 carbon-arc projector, speakers, signs, photographs, artwork, and notebooks containing copies of drive-in ads and memorabilia. Visitors can see the display in the Pennsylvania Room Mondays through Thursdays from 10 am-8:30 pm, and on Fridays and Saturdays from 10 am-5 pm through July 7, 2009. For more information log onto the Ligonier Valley Library’s website at http://www.ligonierlibrary.org/.
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!
Some people still ask if my new book Lincoln Highway Companion has been published and I’m glad to say yes, it’s available. Below is a picture from A Ride Along the Lincoln Highway producer Rick Sebak of local friend Tom Weisbecker with the book at his Isaly’s dairy store in West View, north of Pittsburgh. (And if you haven’t been to Isaly’s lately, or ever, take a trip there this week: 448 Perrysville Ave/US 19, north of Pittsburgh.)
• Update to recent murder of Lincoln Cafe owner: No word on the cafe itself in Belle Plaine, Iowa, but bond was set at $500,000 each for three people accused, and at a preliminary hearing yesterday, arraignment was set for August 13 in Iowa County District Court. According to the 
• Sue Barr writes that “My colleague Dr David Heathcote and I are academics in London and teach at the Architectural Association School of Architecture and Middlesex University. We are working on a book on the world history of motorways and will come to the U.S. in September to look at the Lincoln Highway.”
According to the 
Lincoln Highway News 