LINCOLN HIGHWAY NEWS IS A BLOG BY BRIAN BUTKO
The 28th annual Lincoln Highway Days will be held in Nevada, Iowa, starting today, August 26–28, 2011. Each day will feature carnival rides and games, food, and much more.
Friday, Aug. 26: Celebrate with fun on the Story County 4-H grounds. Lincoln Highway Days Rodeo. Teen and adult dances with live music and refreshments.
Saturday morning Aug. 27: One of the biggest parades in Story County. National Guard honors our Soldiers at War along the route of the Lincoln Highway. Klassy Kruisers antique cars. Antique Tractors. BBQ contest. Lincoln Highway Day’s Baby contest. More teen dancing.
Sunday Aug. 28: A grand day for walking through the Craft building and the Varied Industry building and the Flea Market.
The first Lincoln Highway Day was held October 1983, in conjunction with a celebration of the finished railroad overpass west of Nevada.
LINCOLN HIGHWAY NEWS IS A BLOG BY BRIAN BUTKO
LHA headquarters in Franklin Grove, Illinois, received a call that Ron Preston passed away last week. He was the son of George Preston, whose sign-covered gas station in Belle Plaine, Iowa, is a shrine for Lincoln Highway fans. George bought the station in 1923 for $100 and became famous for his endless tales of LH lore, which I got to enjoy on a visit there in 1991. After George’s death in 1993, Ron cared for the it and adjacent garage full of petroliana. LHA’ers saw Ron at almost every annual conference.
Kass and Eric Mencher, who are documenting the Lincoln Highway and publishing their images in an e-book, captured the station and Ron last year. Visit their blog page below by clicking on the image.
George’s most famous moment came on March 21, 1990, when he appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. The interview starts around 2:30.
Plans are underway in Tama, Iowa, for the 32nd Annual Lincoln Highway Bridge Festival. It starts Friday, May 20, 2011 @ 10 am and runs through Saturday, May 21 @ 11 pm. The celebration honors the concrete bridge renowned for having “Lincoln Highway” sculpted into its side rails.
Friday opens with the carnival and food vendors to the Tama Civic Center area. The Tama Citizen of the Year award will be presented by the Tama Firefighters at 7 pm. Saturday May 21 will again feature carnival and food vendors. The day begins with a pancake breakfast from 7 to 9:30 am followed by the annual parade at 10 am. Free entertainment will run through out the day in front of the Tama Civic Center. Turtle Races will be held in front of the library from 1-4 pm. Preparations are underway, with the Chief of Police and Sergeant searching the area for turtles whose speed will qualify them as race material. Visit www.tamatoledo.com for a full schedule.
LINCOLN HIGHWAY NEWS IS A BLOG BY BRIAN BUTKO
Our friend David Chase has a couple beautiful photos on his 42N blog taken along the original Lincoln Highway in Linn County, Iowa. Travelers can veer off the paved Lincoln Highway onto a gravel road to find an iron bridge and farm buildings. Check out the other barn here, and make sure to click them to see the images in beautiful large format: http://42n.blogspot.com/2011/01/old-and-new-along-original-lincoln.html
LINCOLN HIGHWAY NEWS IS A BLOG BY BRIAN BUTKO
The Tama-Toledo News reports that the most famous Lincoln Highway bridge — in Tama, Iowa — was hit recently by farm equipment, damaging one of the concrete rails which spell out “Lincoln Highway” and causing $1,500 damage.
In evaluating this damage, Schoonover Tuckpointing, Vinton, also found areas where cement is “spalling” – breaking up, flaking or pitting concrete. In addition, cracks caused by settling were also found. Total cost of these repairs and some spot painting was set at $4,382.
Mayor Chris Bearden urged city council members Monday night to approve the repairs. “The bridge is the only one in the country”, Bearden said. “It needs to be in top shape for the 150th anniversary (of Tama coming up in 2012.)”…. Tama’s bridge under went a renovation in 2006 costing $10,675 according to City Clerk Judy Welch.
The council also approved the purchase of seven new Lincoln Highway banners to replace ones street commissioner Stuart Eisentrager said are faded and showing signs of aging due to weather exposure. The new banners cost $153 each or a total of $1,071 plus shipping. The old banners will be offered for sale by the city with the sale procedure to be announced.
Anyone who has seen the Pixar movie Cars — or thought for a moment about how roads have changed over the past half-century — knows that bypasses around towns have a tremendous impact on traffic patterns. The latest to experience this shift are Tama and Toledo on the Lincoln Highway in Iowa. As reported by the Cedar Rapids Gazette, the 7,500 vehicles that daily went through the towns on U.S. 30 have been reduced to a trickle since a bypass opened. Motels and restaurants such as the King Tower Restaurant, below, are feeling the impact.
Since acquiring the local landmark eight years ago, Kristy Tovar has made a decent living running the King Tower Restaurant on the east side of Tama. Since the $82 million bypass opened, though, King Tower is no longer visible from the highway. Tovar’s anything but confident about the restaurant’s future.
“I never really thought that having this highway change would make that much difference, because most of our customers were local. I’d probably say business has been cut at least in half or more,” she said….
Since the days when it was known as the Lincoln Highway, Highway 30 has been the lifeblood of Tama-Toledo. Visitors recall the distinctive Indian head souvenirs sign at King Tower, which has been open since 1937, and the Lincoln Highway bridge that was an early architectural feature of the first transcontinental highway….
Brad Crawford is manager of the 54-year-old Big T Maid-Rite in Toledo. He said rumors are already flying about big restaurant chains like McDonald’s snapping up the good real estate along the bypass to open new restaurants.
Crawford is saving to buy a service sign on the bypass, but the cost will cut into funds he’d otherwise spend to advertise in the local newspaper and high school yearbook.
LINCOLN HIGHWAY NEWS IS A BLOG BY BRIAN BUTKO
Van & Bev Becker send good news from Iowa that the Lincoln Cafe in Belle Plaine is about to reopen. The landmark eatery closed a year and a ahlf ago after the owner was murdered as part of a family dispute. Click the image below to watch a video report from KGAN-TV, Cedar Rapids. Check out my previous entries such as this and this.
Above, the remodeled cafe, and below, before its closure.
Eastern Iowa Lifereports that the last intact block of “automobile row” in Cedar Rapids will be razed as early as Monday:
Lagniappe Investments plans to raze 706 and 712 Second Ave. SE, buildings that in recent years served as the Home Appliance Center and a hall for the Emerald Knights Drum & Bugle Corps…. Tom Slattery, authorized representative for Lagniappe, would not say why the site is being cleared.
Mark Stoffer Hunter, an expert in Cedar Rapids history, said architecturally, the buildings are not significant, but the block is important to Cedar Rapids history. “It’s the one block of downtown Cedar Rapids that hasn’t changed in 50 years,” he said…. As the Lincoln Highway was routed onto Second Avenue around 1920, businesses replaced homes along the route.
In the above photo, supplied to the paper by historian Mark Stoffer Hunter, Barron Motor Supply is shown at 706 Second Ave. SE in this 1935 photo. The store was one of several that lined Cedar Rapids’ “automobile row” along the Lincoln Highway.
LINCOLN HIGHWAY NEWS IS A BLOG BY BRIAN BUTKO
The electronic highway is akin to the early network of roads in the US: exciting changes happen daily but there’s still lots of work that needs done; you can guess that I’ve had some computer problems lately! To get back on track, click on Southwest Iowa News for an interesting article on recent renovations at Harrison County Museum/Welcome Center in western Iowa. A description of what you’ll find at the center follows this image of the Loess Hills overlook.
Phase I of the project included the Lincoln Highway surface demonstration – showing how the surface of the Lincoln Highway changed from dirt to gravel, to brick etc. It includes bricks from the streets of Missouri Valley that had been stored at the museum prior to the tornado that hit in 1999 and were saved for future use. Also included in the expansion are Lincoln Highway interpretive panels, an auditorium showing films on the Loess Hills and Lincoln Highway, a children’s transportation play scape next to a cabin court picnic area, a scenic overlook observation platform, among other signage.
LINCOLN HIGHWAY NEWS IS A BLOG BY BRIAN BUTKO
A Des Moines, Iowa, TV station picked up on the story of the 1959 film showing US 30 in Iowa. WHO-TV channel 13 filed a report centered on the complex of gas, food, and lodging at Niland’s Corner in Colo, Iowa, which is seen in a screen shot in my report of the film. Scott Berka, Colo City Clerk, who is instrumental in keeping the buildings going, is briefly interviewed at the Colo Motel, a Lincoln Highway classic!
View the video HERE. Note it starts with a brief advertisement.
Click the map above for a full-size view of the Lincoln Highway.
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Lincoln Highway News 