Monthly Archives: June 2013

Abraham Lincoln in Gettysburg

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A statue of Abraham Lincoln greets visitors -- and in this case a statue of a visitor to Gettysburg -- in the center of town, outside the Wills House. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

A statue of Abraham Lincoln greets visitors — and in this case a statue of a visitor to Gettysburg — in the center of town, outside the Wills House. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

GETTYSBURG, Pa. — All roads may lead to Rome, but in this part of Pennsylvania, all roads lead to Gettysburg, including, naturally the Lincoln Highway. Roads from Harrisburg, Carlisle, Chambersburg, Hanover and York in Pennsylvania plus Emmitsburg, Taneytown and Baltimore in Maryland converge here.

At the center of it all is Lincoln Square. It’s a charming public space (if you can ignore all the semi trucks passing through on U.S. 30). At the southeast corner of the square is a somewhat peculiar bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln. He’s lifesize in this setting and standing with a statue depicting a contemporary visitor to Gettysburg, who is dressed in a wooly sweater, slacks with sneakers and carrying a copy of the Gettysburg Address.

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The Lincoln Highway From Philadelphia to Gettysburg

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GETTYSBURG, Pa. — I’ve arrived in the place that changed the course of the Civil War. I’ll be here for a few hours checking out some Lincoln-related sites, but before that, I want to detail the portion of the Lincoln Highway I drove a few weeks ago, between York and Philadelphia.

Although I drove this section from west to east, I’ll start in Philadelphia and work my way west back towards Gettysburg.

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Independence Hall in Philadelphia (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

Independence Hall in Philadelphia (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

When you think of Abraham Lincoln, you don’t necessarily think of Philadelphia. But Lincoln traveled here a number of times before and during his presidency and through many of the towns the Lincoln Highway passes through between the City of Brotherly Love and Gettysburg.

According to the official Lincoln Highway map from the Lincoln Highway Association, the original route from New York City takes it into Center City right down Broad Street, Philadelphia’s primary north-south thoroughfare, to City Hall, where it heads west along Market Street, the city’s primary east-west thoroughfare, before linking up with Lancaster Avenue heading out of town.

I’ll start nine blocks east of City Hall at Philadelphia’s most recognized landmark, Independence Hall, on Chestnut Street between 5th and 6th streets.

This is a place you normally associate with the Founding Fathers, the Continental Congress and the Declaration of Independence from the 1770s. But Lincoln was here, too, albeit decades later.

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On the Road to Gettysburg

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2013-06-05 10.18.28

The first glimpse of the mountains outside Frederick, Md. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

FREDERICK, Md. — I always love driving out of the nation’s capital on roadtrips. There’s always a sense of great anticipation of a scenic drive over the mountains plus the relief of escaping the often hellish traffic conditions in the city.

For years, Interstate 270 has been the first leg of the trip (or last leg on the return trip) between D.C. and my parents’ home in East Grand Rapids, Mich., where I grew up. I’ve driven the route countless times and when I’m driving at a good pace, I can do do the trip solo in about 10 to 11 hours.

The primary route heading connecting the nation’s capital to the Midwest does not have any grand directional signs pointing the way to Chicago or even Pittsburgh or Cleveland. It’s just I-270 North to Frederick, a city of roughly 60,000 people about 45 minutes from the Capital Beltway, depending on traffic. The city and the county that surrounds it is a growing bedroom community for D.C. and Baltimore.

About 20 minutes before Frederick, the gigantic commuter route narrows to two lanes in each direction after being a huge suburban complex of express lanes and local lanes.

For this trip, I could have stuck to the official Lincoln Highway auxiliary route linking D.C. to Gettysburg — which follows the old road, today’s MD-355, to Frederick via a jog up to Mount Airy, Md., and the former National Road — but for a quicker trip, I decided to stick to the Interstate Highway System.

Plus, I wanted to stop at the scenic overlook where I am right now. It’s not necessarily a breathtaking vista — it’s scenic nonetheless — but from here you can catch your first glimpse of the Appalachian Mountains. Beyond Frederick is Catoctin Mountain and beyond that is South Mountain.

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Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.: A Good Place to Start My Trip

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The Lincoln Memorial In Washington, D.C.

Daniel Chester French’s great statue of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

WASHINGTON — I really should be starting my Lincoln Highway adventure at Times Square in New York City, the highway’s true eastern terminus. But I live in the nation’s capital, so starting on one of the highway’s auxiliary routes is more sensible. (I’ll be detailing some of the route in New York and New Jersey after I join up with the mainline of the highway up in Pennsylvania.)

And in any regard, starting at the Lincoln Memorial makes sense. It’s an important spot.

The national monument to the Great Emancipator, sitting at the western end of the great east-west axis that includes the Washington Monument, U.S. Capitol and the National Mall, is probably the most well-known representation of Lincoln anywhere.

I’ve been to the Lincoln Memorial countless times and it’s among my favorite monuments in the nation’s capital. A lot of locals like to enjoy the monuments at night when there are fewer tourists — Richard Nixon once made a bizarre impromptu pre-dawn visit to the Lincoln Memorial in what’s called the “weirdest day” of his presidency — but I think it’s fascinating to go when it’s packed with people.

Why? Am I a glutton for punishment? No. When it’s crowded with visitors, you get to witness something that’s similar to a religious pilgrimage. The great Doric temple, designed by Henry Bacon and completed in 1922, is accessed by a grand and somewhat imposing staircase. It’s certainly not like the climb up to the Acropolis in Athens — which I did back on a sweltering summer day in 1996 during a high school Latin Club trip to Greece — but the experience is similarly humbling. You feel tiny in comparison to your surroundings, especially when you turn around to see the grand expanse of the great public space stretching beyond the Washington Monument to the east.

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Why Am I Driving the Lincoln Highway? An Intro to My Cross-Country Trip

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A mural of Abraham Lincoln near 8th and Ranstead streets in Philadelphia.

A mural of Abraham Lincoln looming over a parking lot near 8th and Ranstead streets in Philadelphia. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

WASHINGTON — When you reach the age of 33, your brain apparently stops being creative … or at least stops being creative in the ways it once was. Your intellectual curiosity with the world begins to get stale. You don’t seek out things like new music. You begin to get set in your ways. It’s the brain’s gateway to middle-age malaise, supposedly.

I don’t exactly remember where I heard this but I think it was on National Public Radio, although I could likely be very wrong in the details of my recollection. But when I heard this around age 30, I remember shrugging my shoulders and exhaling in a gruff, defeated way. Age 33 was looming around the corner.

Like many Americans, I’ve been worn down by the stresses of the modern workplace, ground down even more by the grueling 24/7 world of the media and journalism marketplace that’s been going through severe industry convulsions, cutbacks, and consolidation the past decade.

So here I am, nearly 34, past the threshold when my brain is supposed to begin its trip into perpetual boredom. When I turned 33, I needed something to rejuvenate my creative and intellectual vitality and escape the daily routine of moving 1s and 0s across the digital ethos, something that I’ve been doing for more than a decade. Like many Americans, I hadn’t had a real vacation in years and years. I decided to go traveling.

Thus far, 2013 has brought me to Barbados, Hawaii, Thailand, Malaysia, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia and Portland, Maine. My adventures have been fantastic and they aren’t over yet.

This week, I’m setting out to drive the Lincoln Highway all the way to San Francisco, a city I’ve visited just once. The coast-to-coast highway that honors the 16th president’s name, which is celebrating its centennial in 2013, predates the national memorial in the nation’s capital by nine years. The Lincoln Highway has a fascinating history and came about just as Americans a century ago became obsessed with the automobile and motoring culture.

So why am driving this road that most people have never heard of?

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About LincolnHighwayGuide.com

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LincolnHighwayGuide.com is a blog that is documenting the Lincoln Highway, the United States’ first national memorial to Abraham Lincoln. The roadway, which turns 100 years old in 2013, runs coast to coast from New York City’s Times Square to Lincoln Park in San Francisco and was the first true transcontinental roadway in the United States.

This site is edited and managed by Michael E. Grass, a journalist, blogger and Web developer based in Washington, D.C.

Grass is the founding co-editor of DCist.com, the founding editor of The Huffington Post‘s HuffPostDC.com and has worked in a variety of editing and newsroom management jobs at Washington City Paper, Roll Call newspaper on Capitol Hill, The Washington Post‘s Express newspaper and The New York Observer‘s Politicker.com. He’s a published contributor to “Writing Ann Arbor: A Literary Anthology” (University of Michigan Press, 2005).