LINCOLN HIGHWAY NEWS IS A BLOG BY BRIAN BUTKO
Limited tickets are available for An Affair with Lincoln, a gala on November 6, 2010. The event, to benefit the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor in PA, will be held at the Winnie Palmer Nature Reserve located in Latrobe. Enjoy hors d’oeuvres, desserts, and signature drinks while mingling with en plein air artists Kevin Kutz, Rita Haldeman, Bill Pfahl, Bill Vrscak, Ron Donoughe, and Robert Bowden.
The mission of the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor is to identify, conserve, promote and interpret the cultural, historical, natural, recreational, and economic resources along the Lincoln Highway in Westmoreland, Somerset, Bedford, Fulton, Franklin and Adams counties. Established 15 years ago, the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor was recently recognized by the governor with induction into the Keystone Society for Tourism and received the celebrated Enterprise Award as a “visionary in destination leadership and community development.”
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.
YOU WILL LOVE this video of central Iowa’s US 30, filmed in 1959 to show congestion and the need for road improvements. Highway Relocations was created by the Iowa State Highway Commission (ISHC), now IDOT, to show the downside of gas stations, rest stops, and the skinny two-lanes they populate. Filming started just east of State Center at the junction of Iowa 64 (now Iowa 330) and US 30 (the Lincoln Highway) and continued west along US 30 through State Center, Colo, Nevada, and Ames, ending just west of Boone. The film is 16 minutes long and covers 55 miles. {Note: Please read the comments for more info on the cars and the year it was filmed.]
Amazingly, most of it was filmed by a camerman perched atop a ladder connected to a car and extending approximately 22 feet in the air above the roadway! The camera, on a 1958 Ford Ranch Wagon, followed and filmed a 1958 Plymouth Fury. “The unidentified cameraman had the precarious task of trying to hold the camera steady and stay on the ladder, notably without a safety harness or other protective device.”
“As part of the Iowa DOT’s effort to preserve and archive its historical resources, the original Highway Relocations 16mm film was recently professionally cleaned and restored to its original film quality.”
James Devitt Jr., who goes by the name Lincolnhighwayman (in the tradition of a 1917 play and 1919 film), is traveling the Lincoln Highway this summer. He hopes to turn the journey into a book that “will be a mixture of popular history and an old fashioned traveler’s tale … like Shelby Foote meets Mark Twain.” James is already the author of The Malone Chronicles, a novel set in 1939 about a boy who runs away from home. Follow the current trip at blog.lincolnhighwayman.com/. Here’s a video of his Ford Model A touring the battlefields at Gettysburg, Pa.
Project Gutenberg, the first producer of free electronic books, offers more than 33,000 free ebooks of previously published titles, all digitized with the help of thousands of volunteers. Now available is an early road book, Across the Continent by the Lincoln Highway by Effie Price Gladding. Other ebook sites have already taken the file and reposted it but without the images (or I assume permission), and PG warns that these are most likely spammers. You’ll find the safe original here: www.gutenberg.org/files/33320/33320-h/33320-h.htm
As I wrote in my Greetings from the Lincoln Highway book:
Effie Gladding had just returned from three years touring the world when she departed San Francisco on April 21, 1914. She and her husband Thomas first drove the El Camino Real 600 miles south before turning and meeting the Lincoln at Stockton. In a 262-page book she titled Across the Continent by the Lincoln Highway, she doesn’t reach the focus of her title till page 108, then detours off it for another 47 pages near the end, skipping most of Ohio and Pennsylvania. But it was the first full-size hardback to discuss transcontinental travel, as well as the first to mention the Lincoln Highway.
Click the link above or go to Project Gutenberg’s main page for the book for other ways to download the text and images.
I get lots of emails and some slip by for months. Here’s an interesting one from May from Rick Etchells of Richmond, Texas:
My Friend Ken Rozek and I recently took a trip to follow the Lincoln Highway from San Francisco to Laramie, Wyoming. This was our third trip following the Lincoln Highway and we have now completed it all except for New Jersey and New York.
On all of these trips we used your great book Greetings From the Lincoln Highway and on this trip we also used your latest book The Lincoln Highway Companion. These made it much easier to find Lincoln Highway locations. We were able to duplicate the main photo that you have on the covers of both books.
A highlight of our trip in California was all of the snow we encountered at Big Bend Visitor Center in the Sierras. The section of Asphalt that you say is there was completely covered in snow. We had to walk over about 3 feet of snow just to get to the Lincoln Highway cement post!
Attached are a few photos of our visit at the Big Bend Visitor Center. Thanks so much for your very interesting blog and books about the Lincoln Highway.
Photographers Eric Mencher and his wife Kass have been photographing the Lincoln Highway since 1997. I reported on their trip last year HERE as they drove Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah and Nevada. Now they’re at it again! Visit lincolnhighwayseen.blogspot.com to see some interesting takes on familiar (and some not-so-familiar) landmarks.
Eric, a former Philadelphia Inquirer photographer, and Kass are spending 10 weeks driving from San Francisco to Philadelphia and back on the LH. He says, “I’m trying to blog two photos a day (one from each of us), but as the trip goes on that may be cut to 3-4 times a week. The pictures are more esoteric than most people shoot, but that’s how we see! I also have a gallery on my website at: www.ericmencher.com/.”
Last year, motorcyclist Chris Hutter took the Lincoln Highway from Pittsburgh to the east edge of Grand Island, Nebraska. This year he’s hitting the LH in Omaha after a visit to the Surf Ball Room in Clear Lake, Iowa, where Buddy Holly played his last concert. From Nebraska he’ll stay on the Lincoln to its Western Terminus in San Francisco. Follow along at hutmo.blogspot.com/. Note that his map gives a LIVE GPS location! Refresh, zoom in, and see how far he’s gone in a half minute!
Above is a stop in Indiana from last year’s trip. Here’s the 2010 itinerary:
Day 1 Pittsburgh to Chicago
Day 2 Chicago to Ames, IA (via Dyersville and Clear Lake)
Day 3 Ames to North Platte, NE 426
Day 4 North Platte to Rawlins, WY 384
Day 5 Rawlins to Salt Lake City, UT 300
Day 6 Salt Lake to Ely, NV 300
Day 7 Ely to Reno, NV 320
Day 8 Reno to San Fran, CA 300
The Travel Guys radio show out of Sacramento featured a special Fourth of July episode along the Lincoln Highway. One of the guys is radio personality Tom Romano, while Mark Hoffmann operates Sports Leisure Vacations, which offers tours of 2-lane roads like Route 66 and now the Lincoln Highway. Your blog host, me, Brian Butko chimes in with a few favorite stops along the Lincoln. Listen HERE. You can also download archived mp3s here.
Vinton Todayran a nice feature about Iowa attendees to the Lincoln Highway Assn conference. It includes some beautiful images from husband and wife photographers Mike Kelly and Sandra Huemann-Kelly. It also reports on LHA awards bestowed:
The annual banquet June 25 included awards presentations. Van and Bev Becker received an “Exemplary Friend of the Highway Award” for their work in hosting an annual amateur radio event at the Youngville Café in Benton County. The Beckers secured the permanent call letters “NY2SF” – New York to San Francisco, the route of the Lincoln Highway.
Sandii also sent some pictures to me, including those above. In the first, Illinois chapter Secretary Sue Jacobson’s daughter and grandkids greeted the west tour bus. In the second, LHA past-president Bob Ausberger with Sean and John Fitzsimmons at the Lincoln Highway Art & Photo Show on Wednesday evening.
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!
Lincoln Highway News 