Monthly Archives: June 2013

Racing Through Chicagoland’s Sprawling Southern Extremities

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JOLIET, Ill. — Driving west along the Lincoln Highway out of Indiana, U.S. 30 cuts through the southern extremities of Chicagoland. For a time, it follows part of the old Sauk Trail, the great path between the Mississippi River and the Detroit River developed by generations of Native Americans and improved by early European settlers.

U.S. 30 through the southern part of the Chicago metro area is under reconstruction. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

U.S. 30 through the southern part of the Chicago metro area is under reconstruction. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

The city of Chicago itself is more than 30 miles to the north but if you’re familiar with the Windy City’s major north-south thoroughfares, they’re down this way, too. Cottage Grove Avenue, State Street, Halsted Street, Ashland Avenue, Western Avenue, Pulaski Road, Cicero Avenue and Harlem Avenue disappear into the exurbs and farmland miles to the south of the Lincoln Highway.

After passing through gritty Chicago Heights, where there are scores of vacant lots and abandoned houses along the Lincoln Highway, U.S. 30 runs through mostly suburban areas on its way to Joliet, including Matteson, Frankfort, Mokena and New Lenox.

Besides the strip malls and big-box stores, there’s not much to see here. I was in somewhat of a hurry to pass through Chicagoland on my way to Iowa. Weather forecasts for Wednesday predicted big storms to develop during the late afternoon, so I had an ever-diminishing window of time to make my way through.

As I drove along U.S. 30 toward Joliet, the highway was under major reconstruction, but it didn’t slow me down too much.

Joliet is known for a few things.

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Beware of the ‘Socialist’ Roundabout in Valparaiso

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Indiana State Highway 2 bypasses Main Street, seen here, in tiny Westville. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

Indiana State Highway 2 bypasses Main Street, seen here, in tiny Westville. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

VALPARAISO, Ind. — When I reconnected with the Lincoln Highway in Mishawaka on Tuesday afternoon, I followed the original 1913 route, which takes a more northerly track through Northern Indiana via South Bend. The highway was later realigned to follow the more modern U.S. 30, which cuts a more direct route from Fort Wayne toward Chicago, linking up with the original route in Valparaiso.

After my afternoon stop in LaPorte, barbershop owner Adam Wilson suggested I check out the tiny town of Westville on my way to Valparaiso and perhaps stop in at Olga’s Restaurant, which I was told serves up some good pizza. Olga’s is owned by the Pecanac family, which eventually settled in Northwest Indiana after fleeing their native Croatia in 1994 during the civil war in Yugoslavia.

I pulled off State Highway 2, which bypasses the town of 5,800 people, and onto Main Street, which was lined with Lincoln Highway “Coast to Coast” banners. As I was driving around town, I found that there’s not too much the place.

I pulled off to the side of one street to check the rest of the route for the evening.

As I was looking at Google Maps on my smartphone, a portly older fellow walking in the street, bright red from a sunburn, approached me.

“Are you lost?” the man asked me.  Continue reading →

A Shave, Haircut and Refuge From the Rain at Wilson’s Barbershop

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Adam Wilson's collection of vintage and antique shaving and barbering items is on full display at his barbershop in La Porte, Ind. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

Adam Wilson’s collection of vintage and antique shaving and barbering items is on full display at his barbershop in La Porte, Ind. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

LA PORTE, Ind. — As I was walking along Lincolnway in the center of this town of 22,000 people about 30 miles west of South Bend, the skies turned dark and suddenly opened up late Tuesday afternoon.

I mistakenly forgot to bring an umbrella along for this trip, but fortunately for me, Wilson’s Barbershop and Shave Parlor, located in a charming 150-year-old downtown commercial building opposite the La Porte County Courthouse, was right there. In French, la porte means door and Wilson’s door was open.

Owner-barber Adam Wilson didn’t have any customers at the moment and my buzzcut needed to be tidied up in any regard, so the timing was perfect. We got to talking about La Porte and the ongoing renaissance of barbershop culture across the country.

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Exploring the Studebaker National Museum in South Bend

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The carriage Abraham Lincoln used the night of his assassination is on display at the Studebaker National Museum in South Bend, Ind.

The carriage Abraham Lincoln used the night of his assassination is on display at the Studebaker National Museum in South Bend, Ind.

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — When I heard that the carriage Abraham Lincoln used the fateful night he went to Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., was on display at the Studebaker National Museum, I knew I needed to swing through the city that most of us know better as the home of the Fighting Irish.

Although I had heard of Studebaker Corporation, which ceased automobile production in the 1960s, I was not aware of Studebaker’s important transportation legacy, which dates back to the 1830s when John Clement Studebaker first constructed a Conestoga wagon to bring his family from Gettysburg, Pa., to Ashland, Ohio — two towns that would eventually find themselves on the Lincoln Highway.

Fast forward to 1852, when two Studebaker brothers, Henry and Clement, started a blacksmith shop at the corner of Michigan Street and Jefferson Boulevard in South Bend — one block from where the Lincoln Highway’s original 1913 route passes through downtown — and soon, the family business became known for its production of wagons and carriages, well before the age of the automobile. (I should note that the Lincoln carriage was not manufactured by Studebaker, but was purchased in 1889 for what would become the Studebaker collection of presidential carriages.)

When the horseless carriage started to gain steam, there was an intense debate over whether to produce an electric car or one powered by gasoline. J.M. Studebaker favored electric cars and said at the time that gasoline-powered cars are “clumsy, dangerous, noisy brutes which stink to high heaven, break down at the worst possible moment and are a public nuisance.”

The first Studebaker electric car came in 1902. Thomas Edison purchased the second such car produced by the company. But the the economics of automobile production soon favored gasoline-powered cars and Studebaker stopped making electric cars. The production of Studebaker’s horse-drawn vehicles, meanwhile, ceased in 1920, according to the museum.

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Abraham Lincoln’s Kalamazoo Speech in Bronson Park

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Abraham Lincoln spoke in Kalamazoo, Mich.'s Bronson Park in 1856. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

Abraham Lincoln spoke in Kalamazoo, Mich.’s Bronson Park in 1856. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

KALAMAZOO, Mich. — The Lincoln Highway doesn’t run through Michigan but I thought I’d point out an interesting Lincoln-specific spot I checked out during my brief detour to visit my parents in Grand Rapids.

Abraham Lincoln came to Kalamazoo in 1856 to deliver a speech supporting the campaign of John Frémont, the first-ever Republican Party nominee for president, who lost to Pennsylvania Democrat James Buchanan that year.

Lincoln, who was then relatively unknown, spoke in Bronson Park, which remains an important public space in downtown Kalamazoo. This speech helped lay the foundation for Lincoln’s eventual national prominence in the 1860 election.

According to the Kalamazoo Gazette:

Lincoln came into Kalamazoo on the train from Chicago. The train arrived late and he rushed down Rose Street to Bronson Park. There were four stages set up in the park and Lincoln spoke at 2 p.m. His speech touched on one of the halmark issues of the Republican party at the time: restricting the expansion of slavery to new territories and states, including Kansas and Nebraska.

Via the Kalamazoo Public Library, I’ve posted Lincoln’s Kalamazoo address in full:

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Rising High Above the Lincoln Highway

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One of the many wind turbines within view of the Lincoln Highway near Van Wert, Ohio (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

One of the many wind turbines within view of the Lincoln Highway near Van Wert, Ohio (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

FORT WAYNE, Ind. — How do you know you’ve reached the Indiana state line on the Lincoln Highway? Look to the right. If you stop seeing tall wind turbines, you’re in Indiana.

The area north of Van Wert, Ohio, is a hub for wind-energy production, which is quite evident as you’re driving west toward Fort Wayne. There are hundreds of wind turbines rising from the flat farmland. In 2011, there were about 210 wind turbines in the Van Wert area with hundreds more planned. (The Van Wert County Convention and Visitors Bureau’s promotional website says there are now about 400 turbines.)

Fort Wayne, Indiana’s second-largest city, was my final destination for this leg of my Lincoln Highway trek before temporarily leaving the route to visit my parents in Michigan.

But before that, there’s one landmark I wanted to visit downtown. Continue reading →

Charles Dickens Drank Here

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Charles Dickens once visited Upper Sandusky, Ohio. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

Charles Dickens once visited Upper Sandusky, Ohio. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

UPPER SANDUSKY, Ohio — For my Lincoln Highway trek across Ohio, I’ve stuck primarily to U.S. 30. But there are various alignments of the route across this part of north central Ohio. Instead of the more modern alignment, I could have taken a more southerly route via Lima and along one of the most notorious reroutings of the highway.

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A Lincoln Highway marker stands just to the east of the center of Upper Sandusky, Ohio (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

According to a 2004 historic assessment of the Lincoln Highway by the National Park Service:

One of the most controversial reroutings of the Lincoln Highway came when the [Lincoln Highway Association] dropped 70 miles of roadway between Galion and Lima via Marion and Kenton in favor of an unfinished rout to the north. This occurred a mere three weeks after these towns celebrated their inclusion on the Proclamation Route of 1913. An unsuccessful petition asking the Lincoln Highway Association to reverse the rerouting was supported by then Senator Warren Harding, which ultimately let to the building of the Harding Highway along the route abandoned by the Lincoln Highway.

There’s a Harding Highway? You learn something new everyday.

Back in Upper Sandusky, the Lincoln Highway passes an Elks Lodge at E. Wyandot Avenue and 4th Street with an aging historic marker out front that sits opposite a brick Lincoln Highway column across the road.

There’s a spring on the property with a storied past, including ties to Charles Dickens. The English author visited this area just before the Wyandotte Indians, who had long-standing settlements here, became the last Native American group to leave Ohio after heading west to a reservation in Kansas in 1842.

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An Unexpected Discovery in Bucyrus: Hundreds of Classic Cars

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The Bucyrus Graffiti Cruise brought hundreds of vintage cars to the streets of this Ohio city. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

The Bucyrus Graffiti Cruise brought hundreds of vintage cars to the streets of this Ohio city. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

BUCYRUS, Ohio — Last week before I set out on my Lincoln Highway trip, I met up with a friend in Washington, D.C., who used to live and work in this part of Ohio. I asked him what I should check out in Bucyrus. He gave me a strange look. He told me how Bucyrus is the self-declared “Bratwurst Capital of America,” something that I had assumed would be in Wisconsin, not here off the Lincoln Highway in Ohio. But this town has deep German roots, an 84-year-old local bratwurst maker and hosts an annual bratwurst festival.

(Photo by Michael E. Grass)

(Photo by Michael E. Grass)

As for sights to see here, my friend didn’t give me any tips. So I thought I’d just pop into Bucyrus to see what I could discover on my own. As I drove into town on the Lincoln Highway from Mansfield, I found that all the streets around the center of town were closed off. As I turned a corner near the Crawford County Courthouse, a structure dating to the 1854, I caught a glimpse of a bunch of classic cars in the distance.

Bingo! There was something to see here.

I parked and walked to the center of town, which was one sprawling vintage car show primarily along Sandusky Avenue. I couldn’t get a good rough estimate of the number of classic automobiles, but in a preview article, the Bucyrus Telegraph Forum estimated that 600 to 700 cars were expected to turn out for the 22nd annual Graffiti Cruise.

Supposedly, there was bratwurst somewhere to be had at the car show, but I didn’t stumble upon any, which is just as well since I was still pretty filled from the Hungarian pastry I had late morning back in Wooster.

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‘Dead Shopping Malls Rise Like Mountains Beyond Mountains’

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The grand Lazarus department store at the Richland Mall in Ontario, Ohio, sits empty. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

The grand Lazarus department store at the Richland Mall in Ontario, Ohio, sits empty. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

ONTARIO, Ohio — As I was driving on the Lincoln Highway on my way out of the Mansfield area, I came across a gigantic structure with a towering central section capped by a hat-like roof. It was surrounded by a completely empty sea of parking. There were no signs of life, but it had all the hallmarks of a shopping mall department store.

This is the Richland Mall, or at least the former Lazarus, the now-defunct Columbus-based department store chain that opened a branch here in 1958. It’s a bold design, something you can tell was meant to impressive drivers heading by on the Lincoln Highway, known locally as W. 4th Street. It caught my eye, so I pulled into the parking lot.

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Exploring ‘Shawshank,’ Outside Mansfield at the Ohio State Reformatory

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Does this look familiar? (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

Does this look familiar? (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

MANSFIELD, Ohio — For fans of the “Shawshank Redemption,” the camera angle you see here will likely be familiar. This is the desk of the corrupt prison warden, Samuel Norton, and something big happens here toward the end of the 1994 film — I don’t want to spoil the plot for those who haven’t seen it — and a bunch of police cars come streaming up the prison’s front approach seen in the background.

The film, starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman and inspired by a Steven King novella titled “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption,” tells the story of the fictional Shawshank State Prison in Maine. But the Ohio State Reformatory, decommissioned as a prison in 1990 after 94 years in service, was used for filming and today is a local tourist attraction administered by the Mansfield Reformatory Preservation Society. If you’re in the area, it’s a worthwhile stop.

While the reformatory isn’t located directly off the Lincoln Highway, which runs through the center of Mansfield, it is convenient to the modern routing of U.S. 30, which runs as a bypass north of town. The prison is an amazing place to explore, including the world’s largest free-standing steel cellblock, parts of which you get to walk through. You can also go into solitary confinement, the shower rooms, hospital and administrative wings. The audio tour warns not to shut any prison cell doors as the Mansfield Reformatory Preservation Society doesn’t have any keys to reopen them.

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