Bob Waldmire interview to be replayed January 16, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Art, People, Radio.add a comment
A one-hour radio interview conducted with late Route 66 artist Bob Waldmire in 2008 will be rebroadcast over the Internet on Monday afternoon on BOUNCE Talk Radio.
The broadcast time is 3 p.m. Eastern, noon Pacific time, Monday on the “Route 66 Radio Show.” The show is hosted by Bob Moore, former executive editor of Route 66 Magazine.
The original broadcast of the Waldmire interview was April 25, 2008, with Moore presiding over the interview. Waldmire, a longtime ambassador of Route 66 and an acclaimed artist of the historic road, died of cancer last month.
BOUNCE Talk Radio can be found here.
Logan County sees huge jump in tourism dollars January 16, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Attractions, Motels, Preservation, Restaurants.1 comment so far
Geoff Ladd, tourism director for Logan County, Ill., saw an unprecedented jump of 30 percent in tourism revenue in 2009, and Route 66 played a role in that, reported the Lincoln Courier.
There were a number of reasons cited in the rise in motel tax revenue: the opening of a Hampton Inn and the reopening of the Lincoln Inn as a Best Western.
“Other reasons for the increase were all the activities related to the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial, the continued strong presence of Route 66 travelers and a record setting year for the Lincoln Art & Balloon Festival,” said Ladd. “We also had the amazing renovation of the Lincoln Inn, now a beautiful Best Western.”
Ladd said he has seen a significant jump in the numbers at the Best Western, and he expects an even bigger jump from that facility this year.
“The addition of the world’s largest covered wagon to the facility will help establish the Best Western as a great Route 66 hotel experience,” said Ladd.
Considering the increase occurred during one of the worst recessions in U.S. history, Logan County’s performance is very impressive.
Ladd deserves a lot of the credit. Motel-tax revenue has risen in each of the four years he’s been county tourism director. It’s not a coincidence that he’s a big Route 66 booster — The Mill in Lincoln probably would be gone if it wasn’t for his efforts.
Roy Rogers Museum fails after moving from Route 66 January 15, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Movies, Museums, People.45 comments
San Bernardino County Sun features editor John Weeks reports that the Roy Rogers Museum, less than six years after it picked up and moved from its longtime Route 66 home in Victorville, Calif., has shut down in Branson, Mo., and all of its memorabilia will be auctioned in the coming weeks.
Weeks writes:
What a shame. Victorville, in San Bernardino County’s High Desert, was the right home for it. It was an authentic Western setting for a Western-themed museum. It was right on old Route 66, an appropriately nostalgic location for an exhibit hall devoted to nostalgia.
Most importantly, it’s where Rogers and Evans built it, near their own home in Apple Valley. That’s the community they chose for their retirement, after their long careers as stars of hundreds of TV and movie Westerns during the ’40s and ’50s. That’s the community where they lived, where they died, and where they are buried.
If you’re a tad too young to know, Roy Rogers was known as the “King of the Cowboys,” and his wife, Dale Evans, was called “Queen of the West.” More about them can be read here.
Weeks is advocating that Southern California residents buy up as much Roy Rogers artifacts as possible and move them to one of the area museums, including the Route 66 museum in Victorville. “Sadly, we can’t get the whole museum back. But a few choice pieces of it might be nice,” Weeks writes.
The first auction Roy Rogers items will be conducted by High Noon Western Americana. More about the first auction can be found here. More auction dates can be found halfway down the page at the main Roy Rogers site.
This old road (continued) January 15, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Highways, History.add a comment
The post and video about an obscure 1930s or ’40s alignment of Route 66 near Kingman, Ariz., sparked interest in readers. Here’s the video again, if you missed it:
The road, I surmised, would have gone south all the way to the hamlet of Harris, Ariz., had the driver kept going on a primitive road under a railroad trestle at the end of the old Route 66 alignment.
I suspected that Jim Hinckley, who’s lived in Kingman much of his life and has studied the old road extensively, would elaborate on the old section of highway. He did.
Here’s what he had to say, in part:
As clarification this road ends at a former race track near the original railroad crossing. This site is seen in the circa 1920 photograph at the top of Page 82 in the book “Legendary Route 66″ by Michael Karl Witzel. The railroad trestle in the background of this photo is still in use.
On the other side of the tracks a small trailer park is built on this alignment. Much of the original alignment west of the canyon is erased, as numerous service stations and even a truck stop was built over it to serve the new alignment during the 1950s and 1960s.
Traces of the original road are found directly behind Dan’s Auto Salvage, a former Whiting Brothers station. Until this past year, that section of road was accessible and directly to the east was the site of a service station with an extensive dump. This is now buried under Bulldog Disposal yard.
As to Harris, I am unfamiliar. For years the city dump was in the canyon accessed by crossing under the trestle in the vintage photo. This meant the old alignment was kept in good repair. It is still utilized for access to the sewage treatment facility.
There was a great deal of mining in this area and I now of many one and two cabin mine sites in the area. As an interesting historic footnote the railroad that crosses Route 66 near Crazy Fred’s Truck Stop, a real vintage Route 66 experience, and then crosses I-40 is now a discontinued spur that linked with a small sawmill on the south side of what is now I-40.
For more photos and explanations about the old alignment, go to Hinckley’s Route 66 Chronicles site.
Photo of pre-1939 alignment of Route 66 near Kingman, Ariz. Courtesy of Jim Hinckley.
Double the art gallery fun January 14, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Art, Events, People, Photographs.1 comment so far
Photographer Sandi Wheaton, the woman who lost her job and took the opportunity to take a lengthy road trip to document Route 66, will have her images on display at not one, but two art galleries in Canada.
The opening nights of the exhibits about car culture coincide with the nearby 2010 Detroit Auto Show.
The Art Gallery of Windsor, Ontario, will hold an exhibit, titled “Here in My Car,” starting at 7 p.m. Friday that includes Wheaton’s work.
The gallery will show off Wheaton’s collection of photos taken during her Route 66 trip. The images will be at the gallery through March 28. Here portfolio can be seen here.
Artcite in Windsor also is hosting a “Here in My Car — Beyond Autopia and Autogeddon” exhibit at the same gallery, and it kicks off the same night. That show’s opening night also is Friday, and it runs through Feb. 5.
For Artcite, Wheaton will show her Route 66 time-lapse video that she assembled during her trip. A sample of the video — a stretch of vintage Mother Road near Arcadia, Okla. — is below:
NIMBY, revisited January 14, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Businesses.1 comment so far
Newsweek has an interesting take today about Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s proposed legislation that would create a Mojave Trails National Monument. The title of the magazine’s piece is “Not in Anyone’s Backyard.”
In short, Feinstein proposes to set aside hundreds of thousands of acres in the state’s Mojave Desert along the Route 66 corridor and protect it from those who want to build solar-power plants there. I ultimately had mixed reactions to the measure — praise for it recognizing the national treasure that is the Mojave, criticism that it would prevent the U.S. from harvesting solar energy it would likely need. A more expansive take is here; a copy of the bill is here.
A few things of note in the report by Newsweek:
- It reports that the bill has “considerable” support, particularly after Feinstein redrew the boundaries of the park to accommodate more of the solar developers, plus giving them incentives to move out of the park.
- Criticism by the solar sector has also been muted because the proposed bill would prevent only about a dozen of the 130 proposed solar-energy plants being considered by California.
- Feinstein wouldn’t comment on the bill for Newsweek. However, aides pointed to her earlier comments, including that “there are also places that future generations will thank us for setting aside.”
- Some irked solar-energy developers have coined a new acronym of BANANA — build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone.
As I said earlier, I ultimately saw good and bad points with Feinstein’s bill — so it goes with the great sausage-grinder that is American political compromise.
“Cars” comic book relaunched January 13, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Magazines, Movies.1 comment so far
The hit 2006 movie “Cars” has been relaunched as a ongoing comic book series by Boom! Studios, according to a report by Newsarama.
A "Cars" comic book cover, with the cover taking place in Radiator Springs.
Boom! Studios had a four-part miniseries inspired by the film and its locale in the fictional Route 66 town of Radiator Springs. The miniseries got a good response, prompting the publisher to do it again.
The new ongoing focuses on new stories set after the movie, and it starts in this week’s Cars #0 with Lightning McQueen organizing a charity race at his new race track in Radiator Springs. [...]
That story ends with Issue #3, then the second story arc (Issues #4-7) is planned to be what Porter calls a “fun cross-country ride in the spirit of the Cannonball Run and Wacky Races as various characters from the Cars franchise team up for the ‘Route 66 Dash.’”
According to the report, the “Cars” comic book series attracted a following among adults reading to their kids and memorabilia collectors.
For more about the previous series, go here. If you’re wanting to get the current “Cars” comic issues, head to your local comic-book shop.