American Road magazine

G Alaska’s Richardson Highway G Toyland Revisited G National Road Toy & Train Museum AMERICAN ROAD

VOLUME VIII NUMBER 4

WINTER

US $4.95 CAN $4.95

2010

VOLUME VIII • NUMBER 4 • WINTER 2010

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

20 The Road to North Pole

Alaska’s historic Richardson Highway travels 364 miles across the frosty interior of America’s Last Frontier. Between the port of Valdez and the collegewise city of Fairbanks, tundra turns to tinsel. • PHOTOGRAPHY BY AMY C. ELLIOTT • INTRODUCTION BY ROBERT KLARA

BY THOMAS ARTHUR REPP

• VALDEZ-TO-FAIRBANKS TOUR

40 Toyland: How Santa Arrived on the American Road

Christmas-themed parks abound in roadside history. But where did the idea originate? We take our sleigh back to the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition—and Frederic Thompson’s holiday wonderland Toyland GrownUp—to see how Santa Claus came into his own. • JILLIAN GURNEY

50 American Road’s Holiday Compendium

From New Hampshire’s Great Humbug Adventure to North Carolina’s Rudicoaster, and from Oregon’s Operation Santa Claus to Utah’s Christmas Tree Arch, we hit the holiday road to showcase twenty-five sites across North America sure to make the season merry. • ENSEMBLE

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Editor’s Rambler

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Write-of-Way

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Who’s Driving? Contest

“Jingling All the Way” Letters from Our Readers.

10 Friends in the Fast Lane: Road Event Retrospect

American Road Foundation in Land of Lincoln. Vintage Virginia Station Plans Volunteer Vacation. Train Museum Says Happy Birthday to Choo.

12 Memory Motel

Auld Holland Inn, Oak Harbor, Washington. • CRAIG & LIZ LARCOM

14 Tunnel Vision: News Around the Road

Waldmire’s Wheels. Spud Boy & Son. Emu Conducts US 26 Skidoo. Virtual Roue 66. 226A Takes a Tempting Turn. Yellowstone Trail Two-Wheel.

49 Diner Days

Barbara Fritchie, Frederick, Maryland. • MARK A. VERNARELLI

65 Hollywood Boulevard

Miracle on 34th Street. • WILLIAM ZINKUS

38 Grand Old US 6

“Ralphie’s House”

Deck the halls, and light your leg lamp. We visit the Cleveland, Ohio, home where the 1983 holiday classic A Christmas Story was filmed. • JOE HURLEY

National Road “Valley of the Toys” 46 Our In Wheeling, West Virginia, a father-and-son team operates the Kruger Street Toy & Train Museum to thrill kids of every age. • MARK A. VERNARELLI

“Santa Claus Lane” to 101 66 One Slide down the chimney to Christmas Past—and the charming coastal hamlet called Santa Claus, California. • MONICA GARSKE

“Four Wise Women” 66 Kicks!

70 Route And so it came to pass that Four Wise Women arrived on the Mother Road in Kansas—bringing a roadside treasure all could enjoy. • JERRY MCCLANAHAN

“Freeze Frame” the Yellowstone Trail 76 On At the Prairie County Museum of Terry, Montana, the works of photographer Evelyn Cameron freeze images in time. • ALICE & JOHN WM. RIDGE

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72 Think Big!

World’s Largest Snowman, North St. Paul, Minnesota. • ERIKA NELSON

74 Inspection Station

JetCart. Adventure with a Camera. Chrysler’s Turbine Car: The Rise and Fall of Detroit’s Coolest Creation. National Geographic’s Ultimate Field Guide to Travel Photography. Injinji® Travel Series Toesock™. USA 101.

78 Advertiser Index 79 Park Place

Your Curbside Calendar

80 John Claar’s Hitching Post Road Gifts & Souvenirs

82 American Crossroad Puzzle “Holiday Road”

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“Jingling All the Way”

ate in 1964—as he huddled in an office at Fredericton, New Brunswick—provincial surveyor Arthur F. Wightman suddenly succumbed to visions of sugarplums.

Wightman served as the New Brunswick member of the Canadian Permanent Committee on Geographical Names. Circumstance demanded he name ten peaks standing west of Big Bald Mountain in an evergreen area filled with chill. Sources say that, as Wightman pined over his topographical map, Gene Autry’s voice warbled from the radio, singing the preamble to the 1949 hit “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Wightman recalled the lines from Clement Clarke Moore’s 1823 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas”— Now Dasher! Now Dancer! Now, Prancer and Vixen!

On, Comet! On, Cupid! On, Donder and Blitzen!

Wightman named the ten peaks in the range after Santa’s eight reindeer—Mounts Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donder, and Blitzen—adding North Pole Mountain and Mount St. Nicholas to the enchanted list. Not long afterward, New Brunswick journalist David Folster coined the name Christmas Mountains to refer to the entire range. The Christmas Mountains made their debut on Canada’s map, jingling all the way.

Before and since, many mapmakers and civic planners have made merry with their name games.

From Santa Claus, Indiana, to Mistletoe, Kentucky, Tannenbaum, Arkansas, and Silverbell, Arizona, holiday-themed towns and attractions turn winter into a wonderland.

In this issue of American Road, we unwrap that colorful package.

Our nod to noël begins with “The Road to North Pole,” a 364-mile trip from Valdez to Fairbanks along Alaska’s Richardson Highway. Ace photographer Amy C. Elliott captures this icy landscape with an exquisite eye, focusing on the people, horizons, and free-roaming wildlife that cause so many to claim Alaska as one of the world’s last unspoiled gifts. Editor Robert Klara and I provide the literary ribbons and bows.

When—and how—did the first Santa-inspired roadside attraction come to be? The answer lies in 1915 San Francisco and Jillian Gurney’s feature “Toyland: How Santa Arrived on the American Road.” That story of Christmas Past serves as prelude to “American Road’s Holiday Compendium”—an extensive ensemble piece in which our staff of stocking stuffers showcase twenty-five tinseled attractions across North America—from the California resort used to film Bing Crosby’s 1942 musical Holiday Inn to the candy cane mecca that is Ohio’s Spangler Store & Museum. You’ll find the World’s Tallest Santa Claus, the bridge that inspired Frank Capra’s classic It’s a Wonderful Life, and a Dickensian dark ride built in tribute to Scrooge’s “Humbugs.”

During the last decade the Christmas Mountains have become embroiled in a clear-cutting controversy. Progress whittles away the area’s old-growth forest—the last in New Brunswick— and many local residents feel a Grinch is stealing their Christmas. Here at American Road we sympathize: Future generations deserve more than dead landscapes in their stockings. They merit the same opportunity we enjoyed as children to see the world as a magical place—driving with their parents over the river and through the woods, and believing—wholeheartedly—Santa Claus flies overhead.

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 LORI A. MAY LYNN MILLER M. MOWBRAY CURTIS OSMUN LYNN SELDON KARRAS STRASBURG LEEDA TURPIN JIM WINNERMAN Roadside Contributors PETER GENOVESE JOE HURLEY 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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AMERICAN ROAD (ISSN 1542-4316) is published quarterly

by Mock Turtle Press, LLC. Included in EBSCO Publishing’s products.

Copyright © 2010 by Mock Turtle Press. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA. Printed on recycled paper.

MAIN OFFICE PO Box 46519, Mt. Clemens, MI 48046 (877) 285-5434 americanroad@americanroadmagazine.com

Executive Editor G on our windshield: A car traveling the Richardson Highway climbs through the gash in the Chugach Mountains called Thompson Pass—the snowiest place in Alaska. opposite page: Mile 206

along the Richardson Highway, north of McCallum Creek. Photographs by Amy C. Elliott.

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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THE ROAD TO

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WINTER 2010

PHOTOGRAPHY BY AMY C. ELLIOTT • INTRODUCTION BY ROBERT KLARA •

• VALDEZ-TO-FAIRBANKS TOUR BY THOMAS ARTHUR REPP

AMERICAN AME ERIC RICAN AN ROA AN R RO ROAD D

21 2 1

364 Miles of Magic Along Alaska’s Richardson Highway

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he long, fabled, mist-strewn Richardson Highway was born of a magical tale. It began one night in 1896, when a slumbering miner named George Carmack dreamed he saw

WINTER 2010

TERMINI: Valdez, Alaska and Fairbanks, Alaska DISTANCE: Approx. 364 miles

gold and nuggets for eyes.

Most prospectors camping deep in the Yukon would have taken this vision as a sign to keep digging; Carmack believed it meant he should try fishing. So he did. Later, while washing a dishpan in Rabbit Creek, Carmack scooped up a gold nugget the size of an acorn.

The Klondike Gold Rush was on. Forty thousand men on the California Coast commandeered anything that floated and aimed their prows for Alaska—half a million square miles of frozen tract that the US Government had bought for two cents an acre thirty years before, and regretted buying ever since. Now Uncle Sam had gold in his hills—but how to get the diggers to it? The US Army staked a five-foot-wide trail out

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“RICHARDSON HIGHWAY”

floating before him a salmon with scales of

of Prince William Sound, plotted over the Valdez Glacier, then hacked its way north toward Fairbanks.

The gold petered out before the Richardson Highway—as the path, named after surveyor Wilds P. Richardson, is known today—acquired its current luster. The road wasn’t finished until 1945 and didn’t boast asphalt until 1957.

Yet this civil-engineering triumph that came too late for the prospectors remains for us—all 364 bewitching miles of it. Slicing through gorges and jousting with mountain ranges, the Richardson blazes so relentlessly toward the Arctic Circle that—who knows?—maybe there’s even a turnoff for the North Pole.

wisting its way north out of the old townsite of Valdez (the settlement moved some four miles west following the 1967 “Good Friday Earthquake”) the Richardson wastes no time testing the motorist’s mettle. The ascent through Keystone Canyon—2,500 feet in just seven miles—feels stratospheric, culminating at Thompson Pass, also known as the snowiest place in Alaska. Yes, five hundred inches of snow fall here yearly, but the true spectacle begins when it all melts, forming spidery waterfalls that tumble down the rock face into misty cataracts below. Beyond lies the Worthington Glacier, still patiently sculpting the Earth after a hundred thousand years— and close enough to walk on.

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HOW SANTA CLAUS ARRIVED ON THE AMERICAN ROAD

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he dawn broke rosy over the waters of San Francisco Bay. On the shore, the city’s streets and buildings stretched and lolled in the ruddy sun. October 13, 1913, was destined to become a red-letter day—an occasion during which

California crept a little closer to the North Pole and the world celebrated the groundbreaking of America’s first holiday-themed roadside attraction.

BY 40

JILLIAN GURNEY WINTER 2010

AMERICAN ROAD’S

Holiday Compendium PRESENTING 25 SITES THAT MAKE THE HOLIDAYS MERRY EDITED BY 50

THOMAS ARTHUR REPP

WINTER 2010

Grinch and Max Sculpture

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21 Edwards Street Springfield, Massachusetts 01103 catinthehat.org

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hildren’s author Theodor S. Geisel —better known as “Dr. Seuss”— spent his life giving gifts to the world. He taught generations to count one fish at a time, enticed them to read with green eggs and ham, and encouraged all—through an attentive elephant named Horton—to hear the little Who within.

Seuss’s most beloved book, perhaps, remains How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The 1957 yuletide yarn tells the tale of a holidayhating misanthrope who comes to appreciate the true meaning of Christmas.

Seuss was born in 1904 at Springfield, Massachusetts. On May 31, 2002, the city honored its literary fox in socks with the unveiling of the Dr. Seuss National Memorial. Geisel’s step-daughter Lark Grey Dimond-Cates created more than thirty Seuss characters for display in the sculpture garden, including Thing 1 and Thing 2 from The Cat in the Hat, the Truffula-tree-touting Lorax, and the sympathy-ridden cervid from Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose.

The Grinch and his faithful dog Max inhabit a prominent place on the grounds.

Standing at the side of a massive, open book, they stare at a large empty chair. Seuss died in September of 1991. Yet his spirit still speaks from that storyteller’s seat—a Onceler who yertled to reach out in rhyme and left us Sam-I-ams on Mulberry Street life lessons in time.

—THOMAS ARTHUR REPP

Santa’s Workshop

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324 Whiteface Memorial Hwy Wilmington, New York 12997 northpoleny.com

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ith a population of just over 1,100, Wilmington, New York, seldom shares headline space with the Empire State’s major cities.

Yet folks in Wilmington have something their big-city neighbors will never be able to boast: They live next to the North Pole— and Santa Claus.

“It’s like the scene from The Wizard of Oz when the house lands on Munchkinland,” says Doug Waterbury, the exuberant owner of North Pole—Home of Santa’s Workshop.

“You step from black-and-white into a colorful fantasyland.”

Waterbury knows entertainment better than most. His company, Empire Attractions, LLC, manages entertainment venues across New York State—from the renowned Sterling Renaissance Festival to Sylvan Beach Amusement Park. He believes Santa’s Workshop is something special.

“From my perspective,” says Waterbury, “this is where Santa lives.”

Santa’s Workshop opened July 1, 1949.

It was designed by Arto Monaco—a former studio artist for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Walt Disney. Monaco was living in Upper Jay, New York—creating educational toys for children—when Lake Placid businessman Julian Reiss asked him to develop a theme park. Monaco designed an alpine village around a signature “north pole” that’s perpetually frozen 365 days a year.

So popular proved the wintry wonderland that in 1953 the US Postal Service awarded Santa’s Workshop its own zip code. In 1956 Monaco’s drawings were employed to create a sister park at Cascade, Colorado.

The allure is shrinking,” Waterbury realistically admits. “Children older than nine don’t always believe in Santa Claus anymore.

We’ve been very careful to preserve the magic, and we’ve allowed some [youngsters] to hold back those doubts a little longer.”

—MARK A. VERNARELLI

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HOLIDAY STOPS: (1) Grinch and Max Sculpture (2) Santa’s Workshop (3) North Pole (4) Operation Santa Claus (5) Kris Kringl (6) National Christmas Center (7) Santa Claus Museum (8) Rudicoaster (9) Largest Living Christmas Tree (10) Holiday Inn Village Inn (11) It’s a Wonderful Life Bridge (12) World’s Tallest Tin Soldier (13) Elf on the Shelf (14) Dry Gulch Christmas Train (15) Santa’s Village & Sportsland (16) Fort Christmas (17) Bronner’s Wonderland (18) Santa’s Land (19) Spangler Store & Museum (20) Incredible Christmas Place (21) Great Humbug Adventure (22) World’s Tallest Santa Claus (23) World’s Largest Penguin (24) Christmas Tree Restaurant (25) Christmas Tree Arch

AMERICAN ROAD

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