Missouri’s Mother Road September 22, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Magazines, Road trips.add a comment
An intern for Joplin Metro Magazine, noting how a recent issue sports a Route 66 theme, decided to take a Route 66 trip of his own across the Show-Me State.
Webb City readies new tourism center September 22, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Gas stations, Museums, Preservation.add a comment
The new Route 66 Center in downtown Webb City, Mo., isn’t set to open until Oct. 1, but it’s already received visitors, reported the Joplin Globe.
It even had its first official visitors this week — tourists from London who were traveling the famous highway from Los Angeles to Chicago, said Chuck Surface, director of economic development. [...]
The focal point of the Route 66 Center will be a mural by Mayor John Biggs. Measuring 8 feet tall and 16 feet wide, the painting will depict 1940s travelers along a portion of Route 66 that is located near Lakeside Park between Carterville and Carthage, Biggs said.
And don’t be surprised if the vehicle in the foreground of the mural contains a famous face or two — Biggs is considering putting cowboy Will Rogers in one of the seats.
City officials also plan to develop the city’s east entrance into a Route 66 park and welcome center. Surface said he hopes to start work on that project next spring.
The Route 66 Center is housed in a rehabilitated gas station. For photos and more information about the center, go here.
A chat with Rich Henry September 21, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Animals, Attractions, People.add a comment
A couple of very young journalists talk to Rich Henry of Henry’s Rabbit Ranch in Staunton, Ill.
Big Red is the name of the new pet rabbit that greets tourists in Rich’s office.
The little-known tragedy of the Blue Hole September 21, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Attractions, History.1 comment so far
The Sept. 16 print issue of the Guadalupe County Communicator newspaper, based in Santa Rosa, N.M., published a long but gripping story about the town’s Blue Hole.
The Blue Hole is a spring-fed sinkhole about 80 feet deep, with a water temperature in the 60s year-round. For decades, it’s been a popular draw for scuba divers and as a short side trip for Route 66 travelers.
A metal grate covers a small opening at the bottom of the Blue Hole from where water flows at 3,000 gallons a minute. The Blue Hole didn’t used to have that grate. But after a tragedy in the spring of 1976, it was installed.
Eight scuba divers from Oklahoma splashed into the Blue Hole on March 10 that morning, and two failed to return. It was determined by a diving team from New Mexico State Police that the missing divers had gone into a previously unexplored cave of “unknown depth” in the hole.
Tom Hawkins, a retired judge who was part of the police diving team, provided a lot of the detail to the Communicator’s story. The cave entrance was so narrow that some divers had to remove their equipment to swim through. In the second chamber of the cave, Hawkins recalled seeing ceilings of shafts, cracks and crevasses. Another chamber, the Tee-Pee Room, contained a ceiling that “looks as though thousands of ice cream cones were hanging invertly.”
One of the bodies was found a day after the rescue mission started. The second diver’s body wasn’t recovered until weeks later. The searches were highly dangerous — exhaust air from the rescue divers loosened rocks in the chambers’ ceilings, causing cave-ins. Hawkins himself was nearly trapped when a three-foot rock fell on him.
At one point, Hawkins and a few of his colleagues were 225 feet below the surface.
“When I went down to the third chamber, I was using a 100,000 candle-power flashlight,” Hawkins said. “I could see easily in the chamber, but I couldn’t see to the other side — or the bottom — of the third chamber. Just imagine yourself in Carlsbad Caverns, but filled with water and without light.”
After the accidents, those caves were blocked for good, leaving modern day divers to wonder what’s beyond the grate.
It’s a great story. If you’re passing through Santa Rosa, I recommend you pick up a copy of this issue. For more about the Communicator, go to its Facebook page.
‘Everything I imagined and more’ September 20, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Motorcycles, Road trips, Sports.2 comments
Earlier this spring, it was reported that English rugby star and World Cup winner Steve Thompson was going to embark on a motorcycle ride on all of Route 66.
A sports reporter from The Independent of London caught up with Thompson, 32, and asked him how it went. Thompson replied:
“[...]It was a dream trip, everything I imagined and more. We went through Albuquerque, Texas, up to the Grand Canyon. It reached 46C, driving across Arizona and New Mexico, up to 300 miles a day in the full sun. The people were so friendly, and all the more so when I said I was English and doing Route 66.”
Were there any hairy moments? “In some states you can ride without a helmet, and I just had my bandana. But we got the states wrong and were pulled over. Luckily the policeman was a biker and he directed us to the local Harley garage to buy a helmet.
“We ate huge beef and pork ribs in a barn in Texas, a shrine to cowboy world. We ate in little diners where possible. I asked for fruit in one of them to go with my pancakes, and the waitress looked at me and said, ‘There’s nothing that healthy here’.”
Thompson said he first got the idea for a Route 66 trip from a previous team’s younger teammate while discussing it “over a few beers with the lads.”
A message from a sponsor September 19, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Vehicles.add a comment
This is a film created about the Dodge Challenger for the Detroit car show. It’s a throwback car, suitable for a throwback highway:
Two inducted into Oklahoma Route 66 Hall of Fame September 18, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Museums, People, Route 66 Associations.add a comment
Marion Davidson and the late Lucy Stansberry were announced as the inductees into the Oklahoma Route 66 Hall of Fame on Saturday afternoon at the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum in Clinton.
Davidson, who lives in Weatherford, is a charter member of the Oklahoma Route 66 Association and has served as a longtime volunteer with the group and several of its committees. Born in the Route 66 town of Elk City, he was a recent owner-operator of Route 66 Thunderbirds and was owner-operator of a Lincoln-Mercury dealership in Weatherford for more than 40 years.
According to the nomination letter:
Marion has worked tirelessly to inform the public of the importance of Route 66 and its preservation. Also, he has demonstrated a true appreciation for the Heartland of America Museum as shown by his involvement in the idea and the development through its completion and grand opening.
Stansberry served as a curator of Elk City’s Old Town Museum on Route 66 for more than 30 years. The museum complex later added the National Route 66 Museum. She also served on the Western Oklahoma Historical Society and the Elk City Museum Commission.
According to the nomination letter:
Lucy had a real love for Route 66, and enjoyed meeting with travelers. She was greatly disappointed when the city manager chose to keep her in charge of Old Town, instead of making her curator of the Route 66 museum, but she didn’t let it affect her performance. She did a great job running one of western Oklahoma’s most popular tourist attractions.
Stansberry died on May 1, 2010, at the age of 91.
Rendezvous turns 21 September 17, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Events, History, People, Vehicles.add a comment
John Weeks, features editor of the Redlands (Calif.) Daily Facts, talks about the very first Route 66 Rendezvous in San Bernardino in 1990:
On Sunday, the actual day of the Rendezvous, additional show cars showed up, and by the time spectators started to arrive there were about 300 gleaming pre-1967 automobiles on hand, most of them from Southland car clubs. [...]
Unlike later editions of the Rendezvous, which moved to San Bernardino’s National Orange Showgrounds for the following two years, then took over the city’s downtown district starting in 1993, there was an admission fee that first year in 1990. Tickets were $3, with an additional charge of $3 to park.
The fees were no deterrent to spectators, though. More and more of them showed up as the day progressed. By the time the show’s official closing time of 3 p.m. rolled around, the crowd had swelled to 4,000 people, and many of them stuck around for another hour or two.
The turnout was a happy surprise for event coordinators. In fact, they still talk about it today.
“We were overwhelmed at the response and the word-of-mouth,” remembers John Coute, who sits on the San Bernardino Planning Commission and is a pioneer member of the Over the Hill Gang, the San Bernardino-based car club that put on that first Rendezvous.
“We didn’t think it was going to be that big a deal. We were real casual about it. We just wanted to have a little fun,” he said.
Nowadays, the Rendezvous draws about 500,000 spectators.
In other news, 150 friends and relatives threw a surprise 49th birthday party for Luis Estrada, who cruises the Rendezvous in a 1967 mirror-finish RV. Estrada, a veteran, survived a bout with colon cancer after being diagnosed in September 2009.
Here’s a neon light photo gallery of the Rendezvous’ first night.
More about the Route 66 Rendezvous, which goes through this weekend, is here.
“Black Top” September 17, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Music.add a comment
Bob Hood, a singer and songwriter based in England, wrote this tune.
I’ll let Bob explain the story behind the song:
I wrote this one early on in 2010. I intended to write a song about Neil Young driving down from Chicago to LA, but ended up writing about the people who live and love along the historic Route 66 instead.
Glimmer of hope over Route 66 bridge September 16, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Bridges, Preservation.add a comment
St. Louis Route 66 enthusiast Joe Sonderman said he felt considerably more optimistic about the fate of the deteriorating Meramec River-Route 66 Bridge near Eureka, Mo., after a public hearing Wednesday with Missouri Department of Transportation officials and Route 66 stakeholders.
Sonderman said on his Facebook account later that night:
I have to say after tonight’s meeting, I feel positive. (For a change!) A diverse group of stakeholders, state and even FEDERAL agencies are working together to find funding to either stabilize the bridge or build a new pedestrian only span. At least now, people are talking, and there was a good turnout.
The old Route 66 bridge that connects Route 66 State Park‘s offices to the rest of the park was closed in October after it was deemed unsafe. With the bridge closed, one can access the park only through a convoluted route of Interstate 44 and a frontage road. It’s a big mess to go to one of the most popular destinations of Missouri’s park system.
KTVI-TV in St. Louis reports that if some other party doesn’t take possession it or if funding to preserve it isn’t found by February 2012, the state will tear down the bridge. It’s possible that Trailnet, which owns the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge in St. Louis, could take over the bridge. Or perhaps federal funding could be found to shore up the structure. Fixing the bridge has been estimated at $15 million — funds that the state says it doesn’t have.
The only thing that’s keeping the bridge from seeing the wrecking ball now is that it recently was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. That forces the state of Missouri to go over more regulatory hurdles and exhaust other options before it can raze the structure.
In the end, bureaucratic delays may prove to be the bridge’s salvation.