Posts Tagged ‘Ohio’
March 13, 2008
The Lincoln Highway Buy-Way, a yard sale running along the road through 4 states, is set for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, August 7-9, 2008. Launched in Ohio a few years ago, it has grown to include Indiana, Illinois, and West Virginia. Homeowners and businesses set up sales or offer specials along the way, making for a fun yard sale/road trip. Ohio even distributes thousands of free color maps along the route showing the road and Buy-Way business supporters.
Above: During last year’s Buy-Way, we lunched at the Hot Dog Shop in East Liverpool, Ohio.
For more info, contact:
Mike Hocker, Executive Director
Ohio Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor
419-468-6773
Packgpwr@bright.net
www.historicbyway.com/buyway.html
Tags:Buy-Way, flea market, highway, hot dogs, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, yard sale
Posted in food, highways, Road trip, travel | 3 Comments »
March 11, 2008
A bit of warm weather has me thinking “road trip,” through cold weather admittedly has the same effect. Looking through last summer’s photos, one of the best treats along the Lincoln Highway is traveling eastward across Ohio in the evening and arriving in Lisbon after dark. No matter the hour, the corner entrance of the Steel Trolley Diner beckons with neon, stainless, and a warm glow inside — not to mention pies, home fries, coffee, and milk shakes. But for at least 6 years, the other side of town had brought a frown when I pass the abandoned Crosser Diner. It’s a c. 1944 Sterling diner made by J.B. Judkins of Merrimac, Mass., best known for their streamliner models featuring one or both ends rounded. This is a Dinette model, one of only 4 survivors.
Above: Waiting for customers, and a buyer, is the rare Crosser Diner in Lisbon, Ohio.
The diner (127 W. Lincoln Way) and adjacent service station were founded by Jimmy Hanna and later run by John Howard “Wimpy” Crosser and his wife Lorena Arter. It changed hands and struggled in recent decades due to its tiny size and having the main storage and kitchen downstairs, but it still featured solid diner fare and classic decor. One site reports a rumor of it moving but I’ve not seen confirmation or an update. It’s a treasure worth saving and reopening, with a cool little neon sign to match. Any diner fans or Ohio LH roadies know its status?
Tags:Diner, Lisbon, Ohio, restaurant, Road trip, travel
Posted in food, highways, history, Road trip, roadside, travel | 4 Comments »
February 23, 2008
Here are some upcoming Lincoln Highway Association chapter meetings.
Iowa will hold a membership meeting on Saturday, April 12, 2008, in Denison, Crawford, County.
California’s spring meeting also will be held April 12, in East Castro Valley/Hayward.
The Ohio Lincoln Highway League will hold 14th annual state meeting on Saturday, April 26, at the Elks Club in Galion. It will be hosted by the LHA Mid-Ohio Chapter. Tours of local attractions will follow.
LHA’s Indiana chapter will host a lunch meeting, to be joined by Illinois, May 10 in Schererville that will include a ceremony honoring Art Schweitzer, leading expert on the Ideal Section.
Follow the links for more information.
Tags:California, highways, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, state meetings
Posted in highways, history, museum, transportation | Leave a Comment »
January 21, 2008
Here’s a nice chrome card of “Alpine Alpa Restaurant – Cheese Chalet” on US 30 between Massillon and Wooster. It was built by Elmer and Ethel Detweiler in 1961 and opened the next year. Note that the sign differs from the above name, calling it Alpine Alpa Cheese and Coffee Shop. A matching card shows the couple inside.
The additions to the bottom of the sign are funny now – one of them must have said, “We need to point out that we’re a Gourmet Shop.” The other replied, “And tell people we’re air conditioned too.”
A later card shows the building greatly expanded with a landscaped fountain. They announced that all 15 cheese varieties came from their own factories, with Hans and Alice Grossniklaus the cheese specialists. It had become “Ohio’s Show Place of Cheesemaking.”
The business is apparently long gone, but the nearby Alpine Homestead restaurant and Swiss market on US 62 between Wilmot and Winesburg was the inspiration for this one. According to its web site, that restaurant was built in 1935 by the Grossniklaus couple as the Alpine Alpa, 25 years before the above one. (New owners renamed it in 2002.) It’s best known for having the World’s Largest Cuckoo Clock – 23 feet tall. UPDATE: The name was just modified again to Grandma’s Alpine Homestead & Swiss Village: short history here and check the owner’s bios.
Tags:cheese, cuckoo clock, Massillon, Ohio, restaurant, Road trip, shop, Wooster
Posted in food, highways, history, Road trip, roadside, signs, travel | 5 Comments »
December 26, 2007
The Times Bulletin of Van Wert, Ohio, ran a nice story about Webb’s one-stop that once served travelers north of Convoy in the far western part of the state. The story focuses on Larry Webb, whose family owned it. Larry is active in the LHA and Ohio LH activities.
At left, L-R, are the owners of the business around the time of purchase: Jenny Webb (Larry’s mother), Ola Wherry (grandmother), Myron Webb (father), and Harry Wherry (grandfather). Courtesy Larry Webb
Webb’s Hi-Speed Service Station, Restaurant, and Tourist Cabins actually had opened in 1931 under different owners, then in 1946, Webb’s parents and grandparents bought the business. They lived in the restaurant building along with Larry and his sister. When the road was widened in the 1960s, it took out the pumps, and with business already declining, they closed. The cabins are gone too, but the garage remains as does the restaurant, now a private home at the corner of Lincoln Highway and Convoy-Heller Road.
Tags:Convoy, gas station, highway, Ohio, one-stop, tourist cabins, Van Wert, Webb
Posted in food, highways, history, lodging, Road trip, roadside, transportation, travel | 2 Comments »
November 22, 2007
Police patches are increasingly being collected by those interested in the imagery itself, causing concern that the patches will be used to impersonate an officer. Among the many collectable topics is the Lincoln Highway, particularly patches with a road-related graphic. The patch of the Tama, Iowa, police includes what is perhaps the most recognizable LH landmark, the town’s concrete bridge with the road’s name in its side rails. An article in the Marshalltown Times-Republican says eBay offers thousands of patches daily due to this cross-collectability: “Recently a pair of Tama Police Department patches which features the famed Lincoln Highway bridge along with an older department patch sold for just over $27 for the three. It’s likely both police patch and Lincoln Highway memorabilia collectors drove the price offering on the eBay site.” Most departments do not give patches to collectors, but instead destroy old or worn ones.
The police page for Cairo, Ohio makes clear in big red letters, “Cairo PD is not currently giving away or trading patches.” The patch shows the road and spells out “Lincoln Highway.” The page, which has a LH logo, also recounts the road’s history through town:
“In 1921 Lincoln Highway went through Cairo, which was known as West Cairo at the time, on the former Bucyrus Road. Lincoln Highway was eventually designated as U.S. 30. When U.S. 30 was expanded into a four lane, Cairo was bypassed approximately one half mile to the south. Although U.S. 30 has moved south, historic Lincoln Highway still runs through Cairo.”
Tags:bridge, Cairo, collecting, highway, Iowa, Ohio, patch, patches, police, road, Tama
Posted in highways, history, roadside, transportation, travel | Leave a Comment »
November 19, 2007
Two new online resources will ease your search for classic diners along the Lincoln Highway or anywhere.
Above: Earle Hersman at the grill at Jacki and Earle’s Steel Trolley Diner in Lisbon, Ohio, a 1955 O’Mahony-brand diner. Traveling all day across Ohio, there is no bigger thrill than pulling into town, seeing the lights on 24 hours a day, and knowing you can get breakfast, dinner, dessert, or just some coffee for the miles ahead.
Since starting Roadside magazine in the early 1990s, Randy Garbin has published maps to locate and identify diners, those factory-made restaurants with a counter that so many of us love. Then he compiled the info into a bound volume organized by state. Now that amazing database is available on the web at no charge: Diner Finder Online. Visitors to roadsideonline.com will find the feature in the tabs to the right and need just do a simple free registration to gain access. Once there, you click on a US state, and go to a list alphabetized by name, with city identified and an occasional picture. (Once you’re registered, you can access the site directly at http://www.dinerfinderonline.com) Fellow researchers and food lovers have already contributed dozens of updates and corrections, making it the premiere guide to some 1875 diners. The print version is still available too.
Randy told me, “You could say that this project started back in 1986 when I first became ‘diner-aware.’ I vowed then to find and eat in every diner in the country, and this is part of that effort. It remains a work in progress and I continue to receive dozens of updates and photos from readers every week.” Here’s an example of what happens when you click the entry for the Steel Trolley Diner, 140 E Lincoln Way, Lisbon, Ohio:
Another new source for diner info is Larry Cultrera’s Diner Hotline blog, which I’m proud to say was inspired by my move to blogging. Larry has written the Diner Hotline column for the Society for Commercial Archeology’s magazine (which I design) since 1988. He took his first diner photo in November 1980, then the following July started a Diner Log. He’s up to 806 diners but seems to know every diner’s story and owners, past and present. Check it out at http://dinerhotline.wordpress.com/. The heartbreaking image at his page top shows the former Rosedale Diner of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, which appeared in 1973 on Daryl Hall and John Oates’ album Abandoned Luncheonette.
Tags:blog, diners, food, guidebook, Lisbon, Ohio, Road trip, travel, vacation
Posted in food, highways, history, Road trip, roadside, transportation, travel | 1 Comment »
October 22, 2007
On Sunday, I had a nice time chatting with folks from the East Ohio Chapter of the Ohio Lincoln Highway League. About a dozen of them traveled to Greensburg on Saturday, part of a Fall Floiage tour – though with temps nearing 80 the past month, trees are just starting to change. After an overnight stay at the Mountain View Inn and a talk by local LH expert Lou DeRose, the group spent much of Sunday at the Senator John Hieinz History Center, where I edit Western Pennsylvania History magazine. I updated the group on my next book, Lincoln Highway Companion, showed a few artifacts, talked about Isaly’s Dairy (only in western PA or eastern OH!), and they regaled me with trips of dead-end roads and missed turns – important parts of any road trip!
The group got to see the longest stretch of yellow brick road along the Lincoln, northwest of Pittsburgh in Glenfield. The only way to reach it is via an overpass across the railroad from Ohio River Blvd/PA 65. It’s easy to miss, especially when heading south (hint: exit for I-79 but don’t get on I-79!)
Tags:Ohio, Pennsylvania
Posted in highways, roadside, travel | 1 Comment »
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