In the just-puublished Spring 2008 Lincoln Highway Forum, long-time editor Gregory Franzwa pays me the compliment that the blog you’re reading might make the magazine’s news column obsolete. Thanks for the kind words GF but there’s lots more news to read in the print version, let alone throughout the rest of the 46 packed pages. Below is the cover – can you name the building and photo location? Answer at the end of this post.
The new issue is filled with rich color images. LHA Past President Randy Wagner shares his photos of Wyoming in preparation for the 2008 national conference in June. You also find color images highlighting the Victory Highway, California happenings, vintage postcards, and even the Lincoln Highway Trading Post (sales benefit the LHA). Click here to learn more about joining the Lincoln Highway Association and getting the quarterly magazine.
Answer to the cover question – that’s the Virginian Hotel in Medicine Bow, Wyoming. It’s named for the novel by Owen Wister, The Virginian, which he wrote in town (before the hotel was built). You can still grab a meal or drink, or stay the night.
This clip from July 1989 features a couple (nic & sloy, as nicholsloy studio) visiting three sites in east-central Wyoming: Home Ranch, Dinosaur Graveyard, and Bosler. All are along a stretch bypassed decades ago by I-80, while stole business from them but left a pre-Interstate feel.
Home Ranch, 20 miles west of Medicine Bow, is, as Gregory Franzwa says in his WY LH book, “a ghostly reminder of pre-I-80 days.” The couple captures the long-closed gas station and motel, and a great “No Trespassing” warning. Heading east, they stop at Como Bluff, one of the greatest troves of dino fossils, but they merely read the historic marker. Then comes Bosler, almost completely abandoned then and now. There are great views of a car lot, motel, cafe, and dance hall before they pull over at Doc’s Store.
The clip is part of a larger movie, rock n roll roadtrip, a 7000-mile journey across the US and back.
Daily snow the past few weeks has us dreaming of sunny drives along the Lincoln Highway, so here are a couple summertime photos from western Nebraska and western Wyoming. Can you correctly identify either location?
To see them larger, click on each one for a connection to Flickr. Once there, click “All Sizes” above the each image to see them even larger.
Fans of historic roads will want to attend the 2008 Lincoln Highway Association conference in Evanston, Wyoming, this June. Conference coordinator Shelly Horne has begun posting info at www.lincolnhighwayconference2008.com about the area and what attendees will see. He will add more in the coming weeks.
Lincoln Highway Association 16th Annual Conference “Rails, Trails, and Highway Tales” Best Western Dunmar Inn, 1601 Harrison Drive, Evanston, WY
Tuesday, June 17 — Welcome Dinner buffet
Wednesday, June 18 — West Tour to Echo Canyon
Thursday, June 19 — Seminars; Awards Banquet
Friday, June 20 — East Tour to Ft. Bridger and Granger; BBQ dinner in tent
Saturday, June 21 — Mountain Man Breakfast at roundhouse, rides on UPRR turntable; annual business meeting
My web site has long had a Lincoln Highway weather map featuring conditions from 12 cities across the country. This morning, as I walked through 7° temperatures in PIttsburgh, I wondered about the rest of the country. As you can see, only San Franciscso can boast of warm temperatures (47°). The rest of the country is 25° or less, with 3 of the 12 cities below zero!
Wyoming DOT has a nice collection of web cams from I-80, which is often parallel to US 30/LH. The roads this morning look pretty clear in the east, but a few, like Evanston at 7 am (seen below), still look slippery:
“You ever wake up sometimes maybe around 3 o’clock in the morning, you look up at the ceiling, the blackness – you feel that terrible urge to see it all, to get on the road. To smell the pine trees, watch all the rivers, see all the skies, climb all the hills….”
Jean Shepherd was a humorist known to millions through books, radio, and live shows, but is best known to modern audiences for co-writing and narrating (as grown-up Ralphie) the 1983 film A Christmas Story. He also had a very popular TV show: Jean Shepherd’s America, produced by WGBH (PBS) Boston, aired 13 shows in 1971 and 13 in 1985. (They’re available on DVD, or learn more here.) This clip, from the last show of the 1971 season, is the final segment and end credits. Jean and his crew are snowbound in Wyoming at Holding’s Little America motel and truck stop, along the Lincoln Highway and I-80. During the 4-minute video, he talks, in his measured prose, about life on the road, and the American urge to keep moving.
This 1940s postcard advertised Wood’s Motel & Cafe – “ultra modern and steam heat” – on US 30 South in East Evanston, Wyoming. Has any part survived to visit during the 2008 LHA conference this June?
Three large winter storms have combined to cause what is being called by the National Weather Service “easily the strongest systems to impact the West Coast this winter season and quite possibly the last few years.” The affected area stretches from San Francisco, where 1.5 million lost power, to Fernley, Nevada, east of Reno, where a half-foot of snow caused a 30-foot break in a levee wall of the Truckee Canal, releasing water 3 feet deep into town, flooding homes and stranding 3,500. US 50 has been closed at times for avalanches, and those wanting to drive it must use tire chains. Ten feet of snow is expected in the Sierra Nevadas by Sunday.
LHA president Henry Joy takes a break for fun in the high snows of the Sierras.
As the storm moved eastward Saturday, it sent whipping winds and heavy snow into parts of Utah and Colorado, prompting authorities to close major highways — including Interstate 80 east — as the National Weather Service warned that traveling in the area “will put your life at risk.”
“Do not attempt to travel in the Sierra (region) today,” the meteorological agency said in a special weather statement….
One gust near Donner Peak measured 163 miles per hour.
The New York Timesreports that I-80 was closed overnight, then reopened Saturday but tire chains were mandatory on a 60-mile stretch. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was even in touch with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.
Storms also spread across Wyoming on Thursday, causing, among other damage, the roof and walls to collapse at the Moondance Diner near Green River. The 1930s factory-built diner was moved in 2007 on a trip closely paralleling the Lincoln Highway: from near the Holland Tunnel entrance in lower Manhattan, New York City, to the small town of LeBarge, Wyoming. Read more here.
The Wyoming State Parks and Cultural Resources has produced 20 short educational videos on the Lincoln Highway and posted them on veoh. Each one, typically a half-minute long, looks at a theme by using some facts or stories. The videos mostly use pans of still photos, many from the LHA archives. Click here for the series to start—once you do, they play consecutively, or see them all in outline form here. Here’s a screen capture of the Intro video (with a picture of the LHA’s Henry Joy and Austin Bement stuck in Nebraska):
Unless I’ve missed more of the content, there is no accompanying material on veoh or on the state website to tell how best to use these or what materials were referenced, leaving a gap if they’re for education, and leaving helpful resources uncredited. For example, quotes from Thornton Round about the Rock Springs camp and the sounds while camping at night are likely culled from Gregory Franzwa’s Wyoming book. Or in discussing Navigation, they quote from what is said to be an LHA road guide, but the distinctive “Turn left around the shearing pens” material is actually from a 1913 Packard guide to the road, which is quoted in my Greetings from the Lincoln Highway book.
Here are the episodes:
1) A Brief Introduction – :37
2) What Started It – :38
3) Henry B. Joy – :16
4) The Virginian – :15
5) US Army Convoy – 1:34
6) Rock Springs – 1:07
7) Laramie – :13
8) Road Hazards – :40
9) Plains Hotel – :15
10) Mechanics – :34
11) Wyoming – :42 (though the quote is about western Nebraska)
12) Crash – :29
13) Camp – :16
14) Railroad – :45
15) Church Buttes – :24
16) Navigation – :58
17) Evanston – :23
18) Fences – :50
19) Camping – :17
20) Flat Tire – :19
One of the stops during the 2008 Lincoln Highway Association conference in Evanston, Wyoming, will be the remains of the Sunset Motel. The string of six rooms—three with built-in garages—are on Bear River Drive, the LH on the east end of town near WY-89. Built in 1932 in Mission or Spanish Colonial Revival style, this portion of the motel has been saved—the question now is what to do with it.
I asked Jim Davis about the motor court. He’s Director of Administrative Services for Evanston and also on the Advisory Board for the Wyoming Main Street Program, on the Advisory Board for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a staff member for the Evanston Historic Preservation Commission, and a founding member and past chair of Tracks Across Wyoming.
The good news about the Sunset Cabins is that they are still standing. Bad news, we still haven’t figured a new use for them and they remain threatened. The Evanston Preservation Commission had them listed as locally significant; however this does nothing to protect them as Evanston does not have a demolition ordinance or any such preservation ordinance. The cabins remain with the ownership of the city and we are still trying to figure a way for us to find adaptive reuse in order to secure their future. A little over a year ago we placed a restored Lincoln Highway marker at the site in order to draw attention as to the significance of this site.
One of the problems with any restoration effort is how to adapt and reuse. Jane Law, City of Evanston Urban Renewal Coordinator (and who kindly arranged for these photos), says, “We have heard artist studios, concessions, but nothing that gets everyone stirred up enough to get something done…. It would truly be a shame to ever lose them, they are quite unique and really pretty cute. The state is restoring some motor cabins in Ft. Bridger, so maybe we can get some more interest there for them to come a little further west.”
Another issue is having the resources for every worthy project:
At present we really have our hands full restoring, rehabilitating, and preserving our wonderful and unique roundhouse and railyards site…. We are also trying to rehabilitate a historic hotel in our historic downtown; that has been a very long process with years of delay. Our Renewal Agency just purchased what remains of our downtown theater. That will be quite a project in itself. There was a terrible fire there in May and the building is just a shell now, but not wanting a hole in the block or a mini parking lot, we stepped up and will try to make that a viable business for our downtown. So we have our hands full, BUT the Sunset Cabins are something our Historic Preservation Commission should address. I do think those coming next year [to the LHA conference] will like them and could play a big part in thinking of a reuse. [my emphasis]
Jane also sent a detailed and fascinating hisstorical survey of the site that I’ll review soon in a separate post.
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 