American Road magazine Autumn 2010

G Buchanan Highway G Roosevelt-Marcy Trail G Herbert Hoover Highway AMERICAN ROAD

VOLUME VIII NUMBER 3

AUTUMN

US $4.95 CAN $4.95

2010

VOLUME VIII • NUMBER 3 • AUTUMN 2010

American Road Magazine • PO Box 46519 • Mt. Clemens, Michigan • 48046 • Phone (877) 285-5434 • Fax (877) 285-5434 • www.americanroadmagazine.com

22 Buchanan Highway

In history’s pages, James Buchanan is considered among the worst US presidents.

But from Mount Union, Pennsylvania, to Emmitsburg, Maryland, Number Fifteen remains Number One. • MARK A. VERNARELLI & THOMAS ARTHUR REPP

38 Teddy’s Wild Ride

As President McKinley lay dying, the man who would next lead the nation raced against time and terrain. Today the route taken during Teddy Roosevelt’s midnight ride is traced by the Roosevelt-Marcy Trail. • ROBERT KLARA

48 Hoover Highway

Herbert Hoover once said, “Freedom is the open window through which pours the sunlight of the human spirit.” Iowa’s historic Herbert Hoover Highway recalls those words around every curve. • JOEL ARNOLD & KARRAS STRASBURG

60 Jefferson: The Lost State

In 1941 citizens of southern Oregon and Northern California were all riled up about roads. The descendant of their ambition is the piney and political State of Jefferson Scenic Byway. • JILL LIVINGSTON & LEEDA TURPIN

5

Editor’s Rambler

8

Write-of-Way

9

Who’s Driving? Contest

“The Breezy Ballot” Letters from Our Readers.

10 Friends in the Fast Lane: Road Event Retrospect

Canadian Route 66 Fans Take Flight on US 99. Hudson Hosts 2010 Yellowstone Trail Days. American Road Editor Tracks FDR’s Train.

12 Memory Motel

Lincoln Motel, Chandler, Oklahoma. • JERRY MCCLANAHAN

14 Tunnel Vision: News Around the Road

Au Revoir, Riviera 1928–2010. Lincoln Highway Louvre. Nebraska Talks Turkey. Mr. Chicken Meets Tecumseh. Kansas Toilet the Place to Go. Nowhere Leads Somewhere.

21 Think Big!

World’s Largest Penny, Woodruff, Wisconsin. • ERIKA NELSON

33 Diner Days

34 One to 101

“By George”

The Brooklyn Bridge would win all New York City-bridge beauty contests. But the George Washington Bridge could spank its span. • PETER GENOVESE

44 Our National Road

“Honestly Addressing Abe”

What does Abraham Lincoln have to do with the National Road in Illinois?

Ask local Lewis Clymer, and he’ll tell you. Honest. • MARK A. VERNARELLI

56 Grand Old US 6

“Ohio’s Oval Office”

68 Thinkin’ Lincoln

“Presidential Suite”

Between the One and Only Presidential Museum and the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center, the Buckeye State offers two political turns. • JOE HURLEY George Washington slept here! Well, he slept across the road. The tale has been told since 1913 at the Merchants & Drovers Tavern. • ROBERT KLARA

76 Route 66 Kicks!

“The Parita Campaign”

Meet Gary Turner, and you make a friend for life. To him, the past is not simply a memory—it’s a foundation. • JERRY MCCLANAHAN

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38

Republic Café, Portland, Oregon. • JESSICA LEVINE

55 Hollywood Boulevard

All the President’s Men. • WILLIAM ZINKUS

72 Inspection Station

Geography Collection Pillow. Route 22. Montana Place Names. The Roads That Lead to Lincoln. Tri-Star Convertible Travel Bag. The General.

78 Advertiser Index 79 Park Place

Your Curbside Calendar

80 John Claar’s Hitching Post Road Gifts & Souvenirs

82 American Crossroad Puzzle “Haul of Presidents”

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AUTUMN 2010

“The Breezy Ballot”

endall “Breezy Brisbane” McComas left this world in 1981. The Pint-SizedPresident-That-Might-Have-Been—who made his one and only contribution to political discourse on an antiquated strip of celluloid—tipped his beanie to posterity, sailed over the Hollywood skyline, and dropped into that Big Ballot Box in the Sky. As a lad, McComas labored as a child actor. During the late 1920s he appeared alongside Mickey Rooney in filmdom’s Mickey McGuire series. In 1932 he joined the ragamuffin ranks of Hal Roach’s Rascals. Then, as now, the country crawled through an economic morass. Play largely became a pursuit of the past. Woe rained on the human parade. It took an innocent such as Breezy to remind the world that—as Americans—we possessed qualities no tough times could quell: Spirit. Tenacity. And an unshakable faith that one’s true worth is never tied to outward appearances. He did this with one quip scripted into the 1932 short film “Readin’ and Writin,’” a school-daze romp that—typical of the time—saw Breezy repeatedly told by his on-screen mother to study diligently so he might one day grow up to be president.

“Aw, I don’t wanna be president!” Breezy protested. “I wanna be a streetcar conductor!”

These few decades past, some of our US presidents may have wished they’d grown up to be streetcar conductors. Planes fly into skyscrapers. Oil burps into oceans. The dollar flatlines.

Yet somehow the country perseveres—precisely because so many of its citizens understand that the American journey has as much to do with strength within as struggle without.

In this issue of American Road, we travel roads named for US presidents. We do so with an eye toward examining the lives of the men behind the high office. Our first feature candidate is “Buchanan Highway.” Was James Buchanan the worst US president in history? Don’t make that suggestion to citizens along the Buchanan Trail, that 1927 auto route running from Mount Union, Pennsylvania, to Emmitsburg, Maryland. You’ll earn yourself four-score-and-seven words of rebuttal.

“Teddy’s Wild Ride” traces the gritty Adirondack route followed by soon-to-be-president Teddy Roosevelt, upon that dreary 1901 midnight when he learned of President McKinley’s imminent demise. “Hoover Highway” ambles through Iowa, recalling the man who failed to pluck the nation from the Great Depression but later found his soul serving as the Great Humanitarian. Finally, “Jefferson: The Lost State” recalls that time in 1941 when residents of southern Oregon and northern California set their sights on secession. They hoped to form a forty-ninth state named for the author of the Declaration of Independence.

Breezy Brisbane McComas never did become president. He never became a streetcar conductor. Outgrowing his role as a child star, he became an electrical engineer at the US Naval Weapons Center in China Lake, California—an occupation at which he excelled. Two weeks before his sixty-fifth birthday, and in the face of mandatory retirement, he took his own life.

His ending proved particularly sad for someone who long ago showed that a person’s worth never rests with a title, but in the humor and grace with which one meets the world.

Enjoy your trip through the White House of these pages.

And thank you for your vote of support.

THOMAS ARTHUR REPP Executive Editor & Art Director REBECCA REPP General Manager ALLAN BURNS ROBERT KLARA WILLIAM ZINKUS Editors GUY COOK Webmaster FOSTER BRAUN Podcast Co-host JOEL ARNOLD MONICA GARSKE JILLIAN GURNEY CRAIG & LIZ LARCOM JESSICA LEVINE LORI A. MAY CURTIS OSMUN LYNN SELDON KARRAS STRASBURG LEEDA TURPIN JIM WINNERMAN Roadside Contributors PETER GENOVESE JOE HURLEY JILL LIVINGSTON JERRY McCLANAHAN JOHN MURPHEY ERIKA NELSON ALICE & JOHN WM. RIDGE MARK A. VERNARELLI Department Editors MICHAEL GASSMANN VIVIAN MOSLEY Associate Graphic Designers LYNN MILLER DAVE PRESTON Product Reviewers TONY CRAIG AMY C. ELLIOTT Staff Photographers ROBERT C. CLAAR Roadside Consultant TRACY WAWRZYNIAK Circulation LYNETTE NIELSEN Hitching Post Sales JENNIFER & PAT BREMER Online Forum Moderators

Advertising Representatives CHRISTINE MARTENS cmartens@americanroadmagazine.com (877) 285-5434 / Ext. 3 REBECCA REPP becky@americanroadmagazine.com (877) 285-5434 / Ext. 1 SARA WILSON swilson@americanroadmagazine.com (877) 285-5434 / Ext. 2 Phone (877) 285-5434 for the representative in your region

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Executive Editor G on our windshield: The George Washington Bridge—along US Highway 1—stretches between New York and New Jersey. Photo by Veni, iStockphoto. opposite page: In Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, the James Buchanan Pub & Restaurant welcomes all citizens. Photo courtesy James Buchanan Hotel.

HITCHING POST ORDERS PO Box 3168. Lynnwood, WA 98046 (206) 369-5782 lnielsen@americanroadmagazine.com Subscription prices: $16.95 per year, US; $29.95, Canada; $42.95, foreign. AMERICAN ROAD does not accept unsolicited materials. Writers query editor@americanroadmagazine.com. We are not responsible for materials lost or damaged in transit. Views and opinions of articles appearing in AMERICAN ROAD do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of AMERICAN ROAD editors or staff.

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Chandler, Oklahoma

BY JERRY MCCLANAHAN

klahoma’s Lincoln County is as rectangular as the side view of Honest Abe’s stovepipe hat, and Chandler— the county seat—sits smack in the middle. Although the county gained its famous name honoring our sixteenth president via election on November 8, 1892, it boasts none of the giant Lincoln statues or neon signs of Abe’s famous profile on its stretch of the Mother Road. (Those grace—or graced—Route 66 through Illinois, which enjoys an extensive amount of Lincoln-themed roadside riches.)

What Lincoln County and Chandler do have is the brilliant neon sign and double row of quaint duplex cabins of the Lincoln Motel, the sole roadside tribute to the president alongside Route 66 in his namesake county.

Opened in 1939, the former Lincoln Court is one of the oldest motels on Route 66 still operating.

A vintage postcard reveals that the twin lines of cottages were once painted white.

Now the majority of the rooms (a section of brick units was tacked on to the west end of the roadside row in 1967) are clad in red-painted rustic wood siding. This, and the gabled, green-shingled roof, lends an air of “Lincoln Logs” to the premises.

Everything in Chandler clings to one hill or another. The motel’s park-like grounds slope downhill to the west along First Street (Oklahoma Highway 66). A thick hedge shields the wide concrete drive (looking much like a sundered section of old Mother Road) that fronts the street-side string of units. Another row snuggles up close behind while blue-painted metal benches at each door offer

an enticing place to relax after a long day’s travel.

Passing though a succession of owners over the years, the Lincoln Motel is now under the care of owner Harry Patel and Manager Jay Patel. They appreciate the historic value of the motel, including its classic “bowtie” neon sign composed of sharp angles outlined in green.

The Patels plan to complete a historically sympathetic renovation of the property. Much of the motel’s seasonal Route 66 clientele consists of European tourists, who appreciate the motel’s homey, old-fashioned charms and quirks.

As long as its marquee continues to glow—and owners like the Patels roll out the welcome mat—the Lincoln Motel will remain an inviting place for Route 66 roadies to hang their hats—whether they arrive wearing stovepipes or something a little less likely to catch the wind in a convertible. G

Lincoln Motel • 740 East First Street • Chandler, Oklahoma 74834 • (405) 258-0200 • oklahomaroute66.com • Photos by the author.

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AUTUMN 2010

BY

MARK A. VERNARELLI & THOMAS ARTHUR REPP

H

istor y has not been kind to President James Buchanan. The nation’s fifteenth Commander-inChief routinely ranks at or near the bottom of many historians’ lists of “the worst presidents.”

The nation’s only bachelor president and the only Pennsylvania native ever to rise to the rank, Buchanan spent his early youth at Cove Gap, Pennsylvania—then a frontier trading post and the site of the first road west over Tuscarora Mountain. Because of the multitudinous perils near his mountain gap home—from bears and snakes to a rushing creek and Indians—Buchanan’s mother forced him to wear a bell around his neck to keep track of his whereabouts. Later, the prelude to the great War Between the States would replace the bell as Buchanan’s millstone, an anguish that would ultimately ensnare the well-meaning Commander-inChief and taint his legacy forevermore.

But on the outskirts of Mercersburg, a town teeming with history, David Timmons is very sensitive to negative Buchanan comments. Standing next to his artfully restored 1953 International pickup, Timmons recalls “educating” one traveler recently. “We had a lady come through who said, ‘We just had to drive thirty-five miles out of the way to see where the worst president came from.’ Well,

some of us had to inform her a little, and she came away with a little different attitude.”

Timmons expresses the prevailing sentiment along what is, today, a forty-three-mile mostly two-lane highway known as the Buchanan Trail. It begins on the eastern fringe of McConnellsburg, becomes the Main Street of Mercersburg, Greencastle, and Waynesboro, and ends just shy of the Maryland line on the western side of Emmitsburg, birthplace of the only American-born Roman Catholic saint.

I

n the annals of auto trail history the Buchanan Trail remains an unusual entry: Its creation was announced in the high summer of 1927, more than eight months after the nation adopted the US Numbered Highway System.

Word of the new “James Buchanan Trail” swept into Keystone State papers during the first days of August. Richard C. Haldeman—president of the Pennsylvania Motor Federation—had conceived the idea of honoring the fifteenth president with an auto

“BUCHANAN TRAIL” TERMINI: Mount Union, Pennsylvania and Emmitsburg, Maryland DISTANCE: Approx. 75 miles

trail, and he meant to add awe to his inspiration. “This drive will show Pennsylvania at its best,” he told reporters. Haldeman was particularly pleased that the Buchanan Trail would showcase a new highway in its L-shaped swath: the recently-completed north-south section of US 522 between Mt. Union and McConnellsburg. At McConnellsburg the Buchanan Trail would meet the Lincoln Highway, then continue south to Cove Gap—the birthplace of President James Buchanan. The lower half of the route would wander east, shadow the Waynesboro Pike, and end its run at Emmitsburg, Maryland.

The plan was grand, and Haldeman grew so enamored with his invention that he quoted Rudyard Kipling to the press: “It is all in Pennsylvania this morning,” he said, tweaking a line from Kipling’s 1910 poem “Philadelphia.” “The traveler will find every variety of scenery—from mountains and woodland to beautiful rivers and lakes.” Readers were left feeling they lived in fairyland, a rosy realm traversed by a new Arcadian lane.

UNION LABELS: Mount Union marks the northern terminus of the Buchanan Trail—an industrialized town that once held the title “Silica Brick Capital of the World.” Today, Mt. Union stands hard and fast with some three hundred historic structures, including the 1841 Sharrar House [right] and the Shapiro Theatre [above], which was built in 1915, at a time when Etna Explosives Company employees worked—and played—around the clock.

AMERICAN ROAD

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BY

ROBERT KLARA

ack in 1901, the adjective “bully” was the forerunner for today’s “cool,” and Theodore Roosevelt was having what he termed a “bully good tramp” on the jagged terrain of Mount Marcy.

It was September 13th, and the vice president was scarfing down a lunch of ox tongue in the thick of the Adirondack wilderness.

He was one day into a wet, cold, and foggy hike—his idea of a relaxing time—and his mind had finally begun to ease. Though William McKinley had taken an assassin’s bullet in the stomach a week before up in Buffalo, New York, the president had rallied after emergency surgery.

“Wound Critical—Not Necessarily Fatal,” the newspaper had said. Roosevelt saw no reason to doubt as much. “Beautiful country!” the vice president had said, gazing out across the undulating landscape of pine. “Beautiful country.”

It was then that a runner stumbled through the mist with a telegram in his hands. The vice president, who “felt at once that he had bad news,” took the yellow rectangle of paper and read: the president is critically ill. his condition is grave. oxygen is being given. absolutely no hope.

At that moment Teddy Roosevelt was half a day from becoming the 26th chief executive of the United States—and mere hours from one of the most famous and dangerous road trips of the American twentieth century.

Today, New York State Route 28N, a wildly beautiful road that corkscrews its way between the upstate New York towns of Long Lake and North Creek, skirts the path of what some have dubbed “Teddy’s Wild Ride.” (The road’s formal name is the Roosevelt-Marcy Memorial Highway.) Even wearing a modern coat of asphalt, the road is a maze of curves and switchbacks that whisper the dangers of navigating the precarious terrain at night. In fact, it was far worse than that.

y the time Roosevelt had hiked back to the Tahawus Club where he was staying, it was 11:00 p.m. There, he found another telegram waiting for him— this one worse than the first. McKinley was near death, it said, and Roosevelt should “lose no time in coming” to Buffalo.

But reaching the moon might have been easier. The nearest train station down in North Creek was forty miles distant. The roads— and that term was generous—existed as little more than paths of packed earth that were, in the words of local guides, “impassible in winter, impossible in summer.” This was impossible season. Thunderstorms had just torn across the land, leaving the byway a gauntlet of muddy corduroy—that term used for the logs laid down crossways to traverse the swamps— stretches of which skirted high, narrow ridges. There was absolutely no light, and a single false step by any of the horses could have sent a buckboard careening to certain death at the bottom of a ravine. Roosevelt’s companions

“ROOSEVELT MARCY TRAIL” TERMINI: Long Lake, New York and North Creek, New York DISTANCE: Approx. 40 miles

begged him to wait until dawn. It was then that he grabbed a lantern and threatened to make the trip on his own.

Thus began what Roosevelt’s wife Edith later described as “a most terrifying ride in the middle of the night.” The New York Herald Tribune would opt for slightly more ornate language with its headline: that wild ride down the mountain side. leading a charge of troopers at san juan less hazardous than spinning through darkness along the edge of great precipices.

The distance was well beyond the range of a single team of horses, and so the Tahawus clubmen devised a relay in thirds. Three drivers would divide among them the duty of escorting Roosevelt, and their surviving accounts bear testimony as much to the danger of the trip as to the tough-as-rawhide character of the man who insisted they make it.

Adirondack Regional Tourism Council • PO Box 2149 • Plattsburgh, New York 12901 • (518) 846-8016 • visitandirondacks.com 30

Newcomb

28N

Long Lake

28N 84

28N

Essex 30 28N

Blue Mountain Lake 28 28

24

Indian Lake

12

Minerva Olmstedville

30

28

North River

Sabael

Hamilton

29

28N

North Creek

Holcombville

30 8

Warren

28

AMERICAN ROAD

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ike the old joke, “Who’s buried in Grant’s tomb?” the answer to the question, “For whom was Iowa’s Herbert Hoover Highway named?” would seem to be “President Herbert Hoover.” Yet when the route was designated in 1923, Hoover was still five years away from winning the presidency.

BY

JOEL ARNOLD & KARRAS STRASBURG