Posts Tagged ‘Lincoln Highway’
January 28, 2009
One person died Tuesday in a fire that destroyed a 200-year-old inn along the Lincoln Highway in Fort Loudon, Pennsylvania. The victim was a 19-month-old child. A dozen people were left homeless and four firefighters were injured.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
The Herald-Mail of Hagerstown, Maryland ran these photos and a slideshow:
Before I knew about the fire, I was at first glad to hear from Debby Heishman, community news editor for the Public Opinion in Chambersburg, who said she would be running my request for Ship Hotel information. But sadly, she told me a companion story would be about the Fort Loudon Inn, which burned Tuesday morning. That story mentions other Lincoln Highway landmarks that burned in recent memory including Sleepy Hollow Tavern near Ligonier, Swiss Chalet (former Lincoln Lodge) atop Laurel Summit, and of course the Grand View Ship Hotel. All this on the heels of the Mountain View Inn closing Sunday, and a rash of arsons in Coatesville PA, makes for a sad winter along the LH.
The Fort Loudon Hotel was not at a mountaintop but rather at the base of Tuscarora Mountain in the ittle town of Fort Loudon. Its website , filled with historical information, still shows cheery pictures of the place with tales of its recent restoration by Dawn and Richard Gogin and ambitious plans for the future. The c. 1790 house has also been known as the Laurel Hotel or Vance’s Inn to LH travelers, named by Rosie Vance who ran the inn from 1900 to 1946. The common areas (living room, sun porch, etc) had been available to rent plus the inn had 11 efficiency units for long- and short-term occupancy.
Tags:another hotel fire, Fort Loudon PA, historic highway, historic hotel, Lincoln Highway
Posted in highways, history, Lincoln Highway, lodging | 2 Comments »
January 27, 2009
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.
Full contest rules and details are available at www.lincoln-highway-museum.org/ or directly here.
Tags:Abraham Lincoln, essay contest, Lincoln Highway, President Lincoln, statue of Lincoln
Posted in highways, history, Lincoln Highway, museum, transportation | 2 Comments »
January 26, 2009
An article in Sunday’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that the Mountain View Inn near Greensburg, Pa., had not gotten the loan it needed and was closing.
“First Commonwealth Bank on Friday refused to renew a revolving line of credit the innkeepers said they needed to see the hotel through the four slowest months for the hospitality industry,” according to the article.
Despite 60 weddings booked this year (a 50% increase), the owners of the Lincoln Highway landmark said they needed the funds to “see the hotel through the four slowest months for the hospitality industry.” They also cited competition from numerous national hotel chains that have opened nearby. In recent decades, the Boohers invested $4 million in building two new wings, doubling the inn’s capacity to 90 rooms.
Famous guests included Harrison Ford, the Dalai Lama, Fred Rogers, Arnold Palmer, Bernadette Peters, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Guy Lombardo.
Tags:Greensburg PA, historic hotel closing, hotel, Lincoln Highway, Mountian View Inn, recession, roadhouse
Posted in food, highways, history, Lincoln Highway, lodging, roadside, travel | 1 Comment »
January 23, 2009
Now that I’ve shifted to working day and night on my book for 2010 — The Ship Hotel: A Grand View along the Lincoln Highway — I’ve dug out copies of the blueprints. Most fascinating are drawings of the original building planned in 1928. The Ship would be built around this basic structure a few years later. Here’s a look at a side elevation of the original stand with some castle ornamentation. You can see how it hung onto the mountainside!
I’ve seen lots of photos but, oddly, NEVER one during construction of either the original hotel or its conversion to the Ship. Anyone have more information or images from its construction?
Tags:Grand View Point, Lincoln Highway, PA, roadside attraction, Ship Hotel
Posted in highways, history, Lincoln Highway, lodging, Road trip, roadside, transportation, travel | Leave a Comment »
January 22, 2009
The Mountain View Hotel & Conference Center, a historic hotel and restaurant founded 1924, is expected to close on Sunday, saddening not only fans of roadside rests and historic hotels, but shocking brides and others who have receptions planned.
Located between old and new routings of the Lincoln Highway east of Greensburg, the popular local landmark was one of the last old-style county hotels along the LH in Pennsylvania. Situated atop a small ridge, it also was part of the tradition in the state of roadhouses that located on mountaintops to serve the boiling radiators of early autos. The P-G and Trib both carried the news. Updates ran here and here.
The Trib noted that owner Vance Booher III blamed the recession as the most recent factor hurting business, and that his bank “has refused to extend a line of credit that would keep the hotel open. Unless he can obtain an emergency loan by the weekend, he will have ‘no feasible alternative but to cease all major operations.'” That does leave a slim window of hope for continued operation.
The inn’s 89 guest rooms are each uniquely decorated, from elegant 18th century to early American country. The original part of the inn survives along with its knotty pine paneling and great stone fireplace
Vance Booher purchased the inn in 1940 when only one of the original 40 upstairs rooms had running water. Private baths were added by knocking out walls and reducing the number of original rooms to 26.
Vance III took over in 1983 along with his wife Vicki. He has been recognized as an Advanced Certified Wine Professional by the Culinary Institute of America, one of only 16 such individuals in America and the first to be so recognized on the East Coast. Their sons were making it a fourth generation enterprise.
The Mountain View and its original 1925 outdoor pool (removed in 1973) served as a retreat for the wealthy of Pittsburgh until WWII, when it also served as the social headquarters for Army Air Corps cadets training at the nearby airport in Latrobe, now Arnold Palmer Regional Airport (which lays atop the Lincoln Highway).
The website is still operational, with upcoming events listed. Let’s hope financing comes through to keep it going. It’s also a good reminder to patronize locally owned businesses when you can.
Tags:Greensburg PA, historic hotel, Lincoln Highway, roadhouse, roadside
Posted in food, highways, history, Lincoln Highway, lodging, roadside | 6 Comments »
January 21, 2009
Grant Gassman, a member of the Lincoln Highway California Chapter, took these photos on January 10, 2009, of the Lincoln Highway at Donner Pass and Paul Gilger kindly sent them on. The first photo is a wonderful vista of Donner Lake and the road, taken with a zoom lens from the lookout at the end of the Rainbow Bridge atop Donner Pass.
The second photo is the original Lincoln Highway alignment underpass under the Transcontinental Railroad, and part of the adjacent China Wall. You can see how the snow drifts completely over the old road, even from just a modest snowfall.
Tags:CA, Donner Pass, highway history, Lincoln Highway
Posted in highways, history, Lincoln Highway, Road trip, transportation, travel | 1 Comment »
January 20, 2009
Using the same Bible that Abraham Lincoln used at his inauguration, Barack Obama continued to invoke the 16th President, namesake of the Lincoln Highway. Over the weekend, Obama retraced part of Lincoln’s inaugural train trip from Philadelphia to the U.S. capital in a 1939 royal-blue “Georgia 300” rail-car that presidents and candidates before him have used. Here, he looks out from the back of the train at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, as seen on CBS.com/.
The train’s path paralleled the Washington DC Feeder route of the Lincoln Highway that was approved within two years after the main highway’s route was established. Much of the research on the politics behind the feeder was done by Craig Harmon, who will be driving his antique firetruck in today’s parade. The lineup is available various places including here. Of the hundred-some participants, Harmon’s Lincoln Highway Museum (for now an online presence only) is exactly midway. The parade begins at 2:36 p.m. with the new President and Vice-President leading the way along Pennsylvania Ave. from the Capitol to a review stand on the north side of the White House. A neat interactive of the parade and related events is here.
Tags:Inauguration 09, Lincoln Highway, Lincoln train retracing, Obama-Lincoln connection
Posted in highways, history, Lincoln Highway, transportation, travel | Leave a Comment »
January 16, 2009
My Lincoln Highway Companion book is still being proofed for release later this Spring, but already the deadline is here for my next book, due out in 2010: The Ship Hotel: A Grand View along the Lincoln Highway.
One part will feature stories from those who visited or worked there. If you have a recollection or photo you’d like to share, please write.
I also have some Ship info and images on my website at www.brianbutko.com/lh.ship.html
Tags:Bedford PA, boat-shaped hotel, Grand View Point Hotel in PA, Lincoln Highway, roadside attraction, Ship Hotel, US 30
Posted in food, highways, history, Lincoln Highway, lodging, Road trip, roadside, souvenirs, travel | 10 Comments »
January 15, 2009
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.
Tags:Inaugural parade, Lincoln, Lincoln Highway, Obama, reenactors
Posted in highways, history, Lincoln Highway, museum, transportation | Leave a Comment »
January 14, 2009
I’m proofreading the final design draft of my Lincoln Highway Companion book and had to zoom in on Reno. The Truckee River is so narrow through the city that it was missed by the mapmaker. While there I checked on the new and old Reno arches in Street View:
The new arch (built 1987) spans Virginia Street at Commercial Row; the Lincoln Highway passes underneath it.
The old arch was built in 1926 and spanned Virginia Street till 1963; it was rebuilt across S. Lake Street at the edge of the Truckee River and adjacent to the National Automobile Museum.
Tags:arches of street, gambling town, highway history, Lincoln Highway, Nevada, Reno NV
Posted in highways, history, Lincoln Highway, Road trip, roadside, signs | Leave a Comment »
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