Tag Archives: History

Burr on Tap

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For 2020, the Cincinnati Museum Center is holding a series of after-hour events under the heading Museum on Tap. The first, “Space Gallery Pub Crawl”, was in January and associated with the Apollo 11 exhibit then in place. The second, “Aaron Burr: American Bastard”, happened on Thursday, and I was there.

The “on tap” in the series’ name comes from the fact that adult beverages are available. While there are no actual taps dispensing draft beer, there is beer in cans and bottles along with wine and spirits. These beverages were offered at four different locations including two in the Public Landing area. One reason the cobblestone street was fairly empty when I arrived was that many attendees were standing in lines at the other two service locations I’d passed on the way. Event literature admits that the Public Landing of the 1850s is somewhat more modern than the Cincinnati Mr. Burr would have seen but it’s a better fit than, say, the Hall of Dinosaurs.

The museum’s gathering was set in 1807 and, while Burr was not present himself, several of his friends, acquaintances, and accomplices were. Pictured, from left to right, are boat builder Leonard Armstrong, Senator John Smith, Charlotte Chambers Ludlow (widow of Cincinnati founder Israel Ludlow), and Mayor James Findlay. Smith aided Burr in his schemes, Findlay hindered him, and Armstrong and Ludlow were attentive observers.

This being my first Museum on Tap experience, I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect. I thought there might be some sort of presentation but that wasn’t the case this time. I can’t say whether or not that’s true of other events in the series. A handout supplied some background on Burr’s trial for treason and his relation with Cincinnatian John Smith. This was augmented by several posters that might have appeared on the streets of Cincinnati. Chatting with the folks in period dress added details. In conversation, Senator Smith put a modern twist on things by referring to reports of his wrongdoing as “fake news”. When I asked for a solo photo, there was no question of where he wanted to pose. He smugly stepped over to the poster with his name and the words “NOT GUILTY” while ignoring the question mark and the smaller print as only a practiced politician can.

I also spoke with Mayor Findlay, who was among those calling for Senator Smith to resign, and Mrs. Ludlow, who had met Burr only once and was clearly not impressed. Onboard the Queen of the West, Leonard Armstrong happily shared his knowledge of the flatboats he built for businessmen like Smith. From the forward deck, I could see the street becoming more crowded.

One thing happening on the street was artists from Music Resource Center performing original material. I briefly mentally questioned the presence of hip hop music in 1807 but quickly realized that the hip hop musical Hamilton is responsible for much of the current awareness of Alexander Hamilton and the man who shot him, Aaron Burr. In fact, singing karaoke versions of Hamilton tunes was one of the activities supported by the Music Resource Center but the signup sheet was still empty when I left. An area a little bit away from the landing was designated as dueling grounds and Nerf pistols were provided for anyone wanting to recreate the Hamilton-Burr encounter. Apparently, some did, as I found the pistols in various locations when I peeked in but I never caught an actual duel in progress.

Attendees could also increase their knowledge with trivia flip cards or a scavenger hunt-style bingo game and I saw quite a few people doing both. Questions on the flip cards were not Burr-specific but were generally focused on the early 1800s. Bingo game questions referred to various displays throughout the public landing area. I flipped a few cards but left the bingo competition to others. That’s why I still don’t know how much Hattie Calhoun paid to update her dress. 

Free? Advertising on the Dixie

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Seeing things like signs, banners, and menus for local businesses bearing the logo of some large corporation is quite common. Details vary but the basic model is that the big corporation shoulders some or all of the cost and the small business gets some advertising for little or nothing. The idea is hardly new and the concept has never been restricted to purely commercial enterprises. During the last half of the 1920s, a pairing of this sort existed between a major highway and an American hereditary association. The major highway was, of course, the Dixie Highway. The hereditary association was the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC).

The UDC was the “advertiser” in this instance. Between 1926 and 1935 the organization was responsible for at least ten plaques being erected beside the highway. It’s unclear whether or not the Dixie Highway Association was an active participant in this arrangement. Because the 1926 creation of the United States Numbered Highway System brought an end to all of the named auto trails, the DHA was not very active at this point.

Combined, the previous picture and the one at right show the ten plaques in north to south sequence. The northernmost marker is in Ohio, the southernmost is in Florida, the one preceding it is in South Carolina, and the others are in North Carolina. Except for the date erected, eight of the plaques are identical. The one in Florida contains the same text as those eight but has a different image of Lee. The one in South Carolina contains different text but has the same image as the bulk of the plaques.

The South Carolina plaque is the bigger oddity. All the others were erected in 1926, ’27, or ’28. It was erected in 1935. One of the differences in its text is its specific identification of the Greenville and Fort Sumter Chapters of the UDC as being responsible for erecting the marker. All others simply identify the overall UDC. The Florida marker was erected in 1927 ahead of at least three others. None of the other nine markers uses this image of General Lee.

Eight of the plaques essentially look just like this one which happens to be in Ohio. All plaques follow this general format even when some details vary. Approximately the top one-third is occupied by an image of General Lee on horseback. His name appears below the image in large letters. A bit farther down is the name of the auto trail. The letters in DIXIE HIGHWAY are larger than the general text but smaller than the letters in Lee’s name.

Maybe what I’ve written so far will help explain how I’m currently thinking about these markers. My first contact with the markers was in 2008 when I stumbled upon the one in Marshall, NC. After I learned there were others, I made a point of visiting them all and accomplished that in early 2015. At the time I thought of them as something similar to the Madonna of the Trail markers on the National Old Trails Road. That’s pretty much how I saw them until the summer of 2017.

Streets, parks, and statues honoring military and civilian leaders of the Confederate States of America had been drawing more and more attention. In August of 2017, the death of a counterprotester at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA, cranked that attention up several notches. There was now enough attention for some of it to fall on one of those UDC plaques less than twenty miles from my home. Within days of the events in Charlottesville, a group in Dayton, OH, announced plans for a protest at the plaque near Franklin, OH. Plans to protest the protesters formed almost as quickly. City officials made a preemptive strike by removing and hiding the marker in the middle of the night. It didn’t make anybody happy but it didn’t make anybody dead, either.

Some news crews and some of those not happy people made it to the site on the morning following the removal. I made it, too, in the role of curious bystander. I chatted casually with a couple of the reporters and tried to defend the Dixie Highway a bit. I’d been calling the plaques and their mountings Dixie-Lee markers. Everyone else was calling the Franklin marker a Robert E. Lee monument and occasionally mentioning that it was on the Dixie Highway. It slowly sunk in that, for the reasons above, they were right. The monuments were not primarily concerned with marking a road like the Madonnas of the Trail or the concrete posts along the Lincoln Highway. I found myself explaining that the Dixie Highway was not associated with the Confederacy and asking that they not tie it too closely to Lee. For the first time, I compared the markers to a big branded beer sign with “Bob’s Bar” at its bottom. Learning that the brand on the sign was run by crooks, doesn’t automatically mean that Bob is a crook.

The plaque has been pried from the stone at the NC-SC border. It is lost or possibly destroyed. The marker in downtown Asheville has been attacked and damaged twice. The Franklin, OH, marker is back at roadside but is now on private property. That’s it in the picture at left. It’s even been buffed up and polished a bit. I want all the markers to stay. I deplore the vandalism that has occurred in the Carolinas but I don’t consider it an attack on the Dixie Highway. I now see that those markers really are what others have called them, Robert E. Lee monuments that happen to be on the Dixie Highway.

This topic came to me as I was writing last week’s post about the name of the Dixie Highway. I initially thought of it as a paragraph or two tacked onto that post. The length of the Dixie name post left no room to tack on anything and it is now quite obvious that a paragraph or two wouldn’t have been nearly enough. But it’s also pretty obvious that the two belong together. Again, I want all the markers to stay. But I don’t want them to stay at the expense of the Dixie Highway. Controversy will continue to swirl around statues, flags, and other items legitimately tied to the Confederacy. The Dixie Highway should not be part of that. Saying, as I have, that neither the word Dixie nor the Dixie Highway is inherently racist loses some sincerity if defending the road includes defending these markers.

A Dixie by Any Other Name

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If something called a dixie existed, I have little doubt that we could refer to it differently without changing its aroma, but the word “dixie” doesn’t really identify anything. It is not, in other words, a common noun. As a proper noun — with a capital ‘D’ — it is used as both a surname and a given name and to identify a wide variety of things including a region of our country. People with a first, last, or nickname of Dixie surely outnumber things bearing the name but there are certainly plenty of those. It has been used to identify buildings, songs, currency, music groups, towns, counties, movies, beer, boats, ships, taverns, race tracks, waterways, restaurants, mountain ranges, athletic conferences, grocery stores, airports, schools, universities, and much more. With an ‘X’ made of a stylized flower, Dixie is a registered trademark of Georgia-Pacific for a brand of paper products.

In the 1960s, an all-girl singing group borrowed the name — without the flowery ‘X’ — of those familiar disposable cups and topped the charts with hits like “Chapel of Love” and “Iko Iko”. Near the end of the twentieth century, another all-girl group hit the charts with a name containing the word “dixie”. That group, the Dixie Chicks, generated some controversy, but it came from political statements and not from their name. I’m not aware of any controversy at all associated with the Dixie Cups, and I’m guessing that they didn’t consider the word “dixie” to be racist.

But recently the word has been associated with racism by some. The Dixie Highway has been included in some of these claims which naturally caused me to take notice. It is an outgrowth of the rise of controversy and confrontation over Confederate monuments and streets named after Confederate generals. If the move to change a roughly six-mile-long street from Hood to Hope was complicated, renaming a piece of the nearly 6,000-mile-long Dixie Highway must be at least three orders of magnitude more so.

The aforementioned Hood Street was in Hollywood, FL, where three streets (Hood, Lee, and Forest) were renamed (Hope, Liberty, and Freedom) in November 2017. In Riviera Beach, FL, a couple of miles of Old Dixie Highway were renamed President Barack Obama Highway in 2015. The picture at left was taken between the two, near Boyton Beach. Of course, the word “dixie” had nothing to do with the renamings in Hollywood. The generals after which the streets were named had clearly been chosen because of their roles in the Confederacy. The word didn’t have much to do with the name change in Riviera Beach, either. Residents cited the role of the street as a dividing line between black and white and the site of KKK cross burnings.

Although I’d have preferred it hadn’t happened, I have no serious objection to the Riviera Beach action. It was based on specific and painful memories. That doesn’t always appear to be the case when replacing the Dixie Highway name is proposed. Published reports of these proposals have occasionally prompted me to send emails to people connected with them. It is not done to protest but to inform. We road fans often comment — and sometimes laugh or cry — about people being completely oblivious to a major historic highway running right by their door. Knowing how common that is with “celebrities” like the Lincoln Highway and Route 66, we shouldn’t be surprised that it is even more often the case with the lesser known and more complex Dixie Highway. Not knowing just how important or far-reaching all the roads in your neighborhood once were is a pretty natural situation.

It seems that even we fans don’t always consider that “far-reaching” bit. It’s OK to be saddened by a name change, but there is no reason to verbally abuse, as I’ve seen too many times, those backing a change. Removing the name Dixie Highway from a few miles of Florida — or other — roadway is not going to affect all those other miles any more than Cheyenne, WY, (The first town to do so.) changing its Main Street to Lincoln Way impacted the rest of the continent crossing highway. The Dixie Highway, as well as every other named auto trail, was never labeled with its name in every jurisdiction it passed through. Numbered US and state highways utilize streets and roads with all sorts of names. Not one inch of US-66 officially exists at present yet people follow it every day. The Adairsville, GA, pavement in the picture at left is officially named and signed Main Street but that doesn’t change its past as a part of the Dixie Highway or prevent it being unofficially marked as such.

Most of the talk about renaming sections of the Dixie Highway has originated in Florida. In some sense, that’s ironic since the Dixie Highway was a major factor in the development of the state. On the other hand, development is rarely 100% beneficial to all and I’ve no doubt that many were negatively impacted by the development and the road that helped it along. Plus, as those Riviera Beach memories show, experiences generate stronger feelings than a name or a physical path ever could. About two weeks ago, the New York Times published an article based on discussions in Florida’s Miami-Dade County. Its audience was almost certainly wider than that of similar articles publishes by Florida based news organizations. One indication of that was a small but obvious two-day blip in visits to an eight-year-old Dixie Highway related post on this blog. Maybe that’s somehow fitting since I’ve often quoted the Times when trying to convey that the Dixie Highway is not inherently evil. In 1915, the paper referred to the route as “The Dixie Peaceway” when it reported the formation of the Dixie Highway Association. It described the road as “a monument to celebrate the half-century of peace within the Union”. Maybe that was hyperbole or maybe it really reflected the feelings of the time. If so, it seems extra sad that so many see it as something entirely different today.

Those people who found this site after reading the New York Times article didn’t learn a whole lot during their visit but they were obviously curious. They were brought by search engines which may have also taken them to other sites where they learned much more. Whether curiosity was their only reason for visiting or they were decision-makers gathering background, I’ll never know. Regardless, I suspect we will see a few more miles of Dixie Highway get renamed before it’s all over. That’s unfortunate but hardly a disaster. No matter the name, it will still smell like a rose — or maybe an orange blossom — with strong undertones of asphalt and Model T brake bands.

ADDENDUM 9-Feb-2020: Some thoughts on the markers placed along the Dixie Highway by the United Daughters of the Confederacy were considered for this post but have been given their own post instead. Free? Advertising on the Dixie

Book Review
The Other Trail of Tears
Mary Stockwell

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I read this book by accident and belatedly. The accident comes from a spontaneous purchase. The belated reading comes from me not realizing how good it is. I picked the book up back in June of 2018 when I went to hear Mary Stockwell talk on her just-published Unlikely General about my childhood hero, Anthony Wayne. I knew nothing about Stockwell or any other books she had written but bought a copy of The Other Trail of Tears because it sounded kind of interesting and, perhaps more importantly, I was there. Unlikely General worked its way through the stack in a fairly timely manner; It was read and reviewed by November 2018. I let other books move ahead of this one and even loaned it, along with Unlikely General, to a friend to read. When I eventually did start reading The Other Trail of Tears, I quickly put it aside to accommodate two new road-related books. The second attempt went much better and I quickly regretted not diving in sooner. As is too often the case, my preconceptions were wrong. This is another book that was much more than I expected.

Like most people, I am fairly familiar with the forced removal of Native Americans from the southern United States that caused inconceivable suffering and thousands of deaths during the trek west known as The Trail of Tears. Those were the most horrific of the relocations resulting from the Indian Removal Act of 1830 but there were others.

Several reservations once existed in northern Ohio occupied by Shawnee, Wyandot, Seneca, and others. As an Ohioan, I was somewhat aware of these reservations and even knew a little bit about the forced removal of these people. I assumed that Stockwell’s book was filled with details of that removal. Perhaps that assumption and the accompanying assumption that those details would be terribly depressing contributed to my delay in actually reading the book.

My assumptions were not wrong but neither were they complete. The stories of the actual treks to the west are properly told and they are indeed depressing. But they do not fill the book. More pages are used telling of what preceded the removals than on the actual journeys. Stockwell’s coverage of the treaties and trades that resulted in the removal and the people and policies involved is rather detailed and seems complete. There is a lot of history here that I was quite ignorant of.

Though extremely educational, the pre-removal history is also somewhat depressing, and the whole book can fuel that sense of guilt we descendants of European Americans often feel when contemplating the last few centuries of Native American history.

Stockwell doesn’t stoke the guilt or overly stress the sadder aspects of the treks. Although she doesn’t completely hide her sense that Native Americans got a really raw deal, for the most part she sticks to accurately reporting the facts about an undeniably sad period in U.S. history.

The Other Trail of Tears: The Removal of the Ohio Indians, Mary Stockwell, Westholme Publishing, March 18, 2016, 9 x 6 inches, 300 pages, ISBN 978-1594162589
Available through Amazon.

Treasures of the Spanish World

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When the Cincinnati Art Museum announced this upcoming exhibit near summer’s end, I was interested but not overly so. In fact, I didn’t put it on my Gotta-See-That list but on my I’ll-See-That-If-It’s-Convenient list. That was a mistake and I’m sure glad there was a day when taking in Treasures of the Spanish World was convenient and it didn’t end up on my Sorry-I-Missed-That list.

First off, it’s big. Its more than 200 objects fill several of the galleries I associate with temporary exhibits. And it’s not just big in terms of space but in time as well. The oldest items in the exhibit are from the middle of the third millennium BCE; The newest are from the twentieth century CE. Most items, including intricately decorated fabrics and ceramics, call for some up-close study. The pictured “books” are letters patent of nobility (cartas ejecutorias de hidalguia) that attest to “the holder’s gentility” and social position. They are wonderfully decorated and often contain images of the holder and/or grantor.

Numerous paintings, including quite a few portraits, are on display. These, showing a wide range of scale, are the work of Domenikos Theotokopoulos (a.k.a, El Greco).

At the beginning of a section named “Golden Age“, visitors are reminded that “In the 1500s Spain was the most powerful country in the western world”. The western world was getting a whole lot bigger in those days and Spain played a huge role in that. The large map, from which the clip of the Americas was taken, was created by Giovanni Vespucci in 1526 as a royal wedding gift. Giovanni inherited the job of maintaining Spain’s master nautical chart from his uncle, Amerigo.

Of course, Christianity was really big in both Old and New Spain. The large wooden relief sculpture was once part of an even larger piece in a Mexican Church. It dates from around 1600.

The exhibit is organized chronologically and physically divided into two parts. The second section is certainly interesting enough  — there are a few Goyas among its several paintings — but I only have one photo from it. I seem to like my history with a side of art more than the other way round. “Advances of the Nineteenth Century” is a set of tiles recounting recent progress from the vantage point of 1903. The bicycle, locomotive, flush toilet, and sewing machine are clearly steps forward. Not so clear is whatever advance the bullfighting tile is touting.

This touring exhibit was made possible by a major renovation project at the Hispanic Society Museum & Library in New York City. That’s where the items in the exhibit normally appear and many of them have never been displayed elsewhere. The exhibit initially appeared in Madrid, Spain, and appeared in Mexico City and Albuquerque before reaching Cincinnati. There’s still time to see it but not much. This is being published when just one week of the fourteen-week run remains. As I said in the opening paragraph, I’m glad Treasures of the Spanish World avoided going on my Sorry-I-Missed-That list. I recommend you keep it off of yours, too, if you can.

A Cosmic Reason for the Season

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Calendars come and calendars go and Earth just keeps on turning. And it keeps on orbiting, too. The turning bit creates what we call days. The alternating periods of light and dark impact almost all life on the planet and humans adopted the day as a basic unit of measure pretty early on. What we call years comes from Earth orbiting the Sun. There was plenty of time for early humans to stare at the sky and not a whole lot to keep them from doing it. They couldn’t help but notice that things in the sky moved around. In time, some of the more observant among them realized that not all that movement was random and eventually some patterns were noted. I can’t imagine how exciting it was when some smart guy figured out that the sun popped up at the same point about every 365 days. Of course, that “about” would be very important.

The opening photo shows the sun rising yesterday over a “gateway” in the earthen enclosure at Fort Ancient. The photo at left was taken a bit later and includes a small mound inside the enclosure in the foreground. When the mound, gateway, and sunrise align, sunset will follow sooner than on any other day of the year. This is the northern hemisphere’s Winter Solstice. It is the day when the sun is above the horizon for less time than any other day of the year, and yesterday that amounted to 9 hours, 25 minutes, and 9 seconds. Although we talk about Solstice being a day, it is technically just an instant. It is the moment when the Sun is farthest north or south of Earth’s equator. It happens twice each year and happened yesterday at 23:19 EST.

Serpent Mound, another ancient earthen structure containing solar alignments, is a little more than forty miles southeast of Fort Ancient. The serpent’s head is aligned with the Summer Solstice sunset. Body coils align with Summer and Winter Solstice sunrises. For several years, a modern event known as Lighting of the Serpent took place there at Winter Solstice. It was discontinued in 2017. The picture at right is from 2014 which is the only time I attended.

Long before they knew anything about orbits and equators, humans knew the day of Winter Solstice was special. It is the point where each successive day receives more rather than less daylight. It’s the big turnaround that will eventually lead to the warmth of spring and summer. It is clearly a day worth celebrating and it has indeed been celebrated in many different cultures in many different ways.

During their existence, humans have developed a slew of calendar systems. Several actually remain in use today, but the Gregorian calendar is the one most widely accepted. In the late sixteenth century, this started replacing the Julian calendar which had been around for all of those sixteen centuries and then some. The Julian calendar had been created by folks who calculated that a year was 365 and 1/4 days long which was a lot more accurate than an even 365. They came up with the rather clever idea of adding an extra day every four years to balance things out.

We now know that a year is 365.2422 days long. A year is the length of time it takes Earth to orbit the Sun, a day is the length of time it takes Earth to rotate, and neither is adjustable. When the Julian calendar was first adopted, the northern hemisphere’s Winter Solstice fell on December 25 but it slowly drifted away. Someone in authority thought to put an end to this nonsense by declaring December 25 the official solstice. But those non-adjustable orbits and rotations kept doing what they were doing and the official solstice and actual solstice just kept getting farther and farther apart.

The Gregorian calendar, which we have used for roughly 400 years now, put an end to that. Like the Julian calendar, it considers most years to be 365 days long but has a more involved system of “leap years” that add an extra day. The result is that over a long enough period our years will average 365.2422 days in length. Not only did the new calendar eliminate future drift, it tried to correct for some of the previous drift by throwing away ten days. The calendar’s namesake’s full-time job was as Pope of the Catholic Church. Ditching those ten days moved the solstice to December 22 which is where it had been in 325 when the church was founded. Of course, some holidays that had been tied to the official solstice (which hadn’t been anywhere near the actual solstice for some time) would continue to be celebrated on December 25.

Anyone wanting a more complete discussion of calendars, solstices, and holidays will find one here. Additional information on Fort Ancient is available here.

Book Review
After Ike
Michael S. Owen

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There are things that fans of old roads or of transportation history in general falsely assume that everyone knows about. One such item is the continent crossing Motor Transport Corps convoy of 1919. In the summer following the end of the first World War, a group of military personnel and vehicles set off from Washington, DC, to test the nation’s roads all the way to San Francisco. Although he was primarily an observer on the trip, his future accomplishments make Dwight Eisenhower the member of the convoy best-known today. Michael Owen uses the future president’s nickname in naming this telling of his own retracing of the 3,250-mile-long path that some 300 men and 81 vehicles of all shapes and sizes followed a century ago.

As one might expect, Owen mixes lots of information about the military convoy’s trip with the description of his own journey. Much less expected is the fact that he is not one of those long-time fans of old roads or transportation history that I mentioned earlier. As a US Ambassador, he spent considerable time in Africa and Asia. Now retired, he is happily becoming better acquainted with the roads and attractions of his homeland.

On his coast to coast drive, Owen is part researching author and part curious tourist. He often spends multiple days in one place and digs into local history and points of interest. Some of what he finds relates to the convoy and some is simply interesting on its own. A sampling includes a stop at Carnegie-Mellon to talk with a professor about autonomous vehicles and a visit to the Pro Football Hall of Fame which provides an opportunity to talk about Ike’s time as running back at West Point. He visits several museums including the Studebaker museum in South Bend, IN, and the El Dorado County Historical Museum in Placerville, CA. He spends time in small libraries and chatting with locals.

Much of the convoy related information Owen shares comes from journals and official reports written by the participants but local newspaper archives are also used extensively. The motorized convoy was a major event in those early days of the automobile and much attention was focused on its progress. Communities along the route often vied with each other to host the convoy and the dinners, dances, and demonstrations were documented by the local press. More or less typical is the South Bend [Indiana] News-Times report of the convoy’s arrival and departure that included the observation that “…lemonade was given to them in abundance by the Chamber of Commerce.” In Austin, NV, the Reese River Reveille reported that officials “…placed shower baths in the four cells of the jail…” for use by the soldiers.

Some non-convoy related items Owen finds in those old newspapers are used to provide a peek at the world of 1919. A headline from that South Bend News-Times issue reads “Seven Women Take Aeroplane Rides!” From the DeKalb [Illinois] Daily Chronicle, he quotes an article about the convoy’s “3,000,000 candle power searchlight” followed by quotes from an advertisement for the latest Thor Electric Washing Machine. In writing about his modern-day travels, Owen uses signs he sees in a manner similar to the way he uses those period newspaper items. It’s kind of like having a passenger who reads signs aloud; Signs like “Farm fresh eggs! Laid by Happy Chickens”, “Food! Liquor! Wine! Beauty Products!”, and “Gardening for God Brings Peas of Mind”.

Eighteen pages of black and white photos are placed just past the book midpoint. All were taken by the author. Readers familiar with the Lincoln Highway and the modern Lincoln Highway Association will find some familiar places and faces.

The book cover bio says Owen has “driven over the Lincoln Highway several times” but he doesn’t come across as a seasoned road tripper. On one hand, that brings some freshness to the writing. Things like reading aloud signs about eggs bring a sense of sharing the surprises to the reporting. On the other, it may be responsible for allowing a few minor errors to slip in. Early in the book, Owen notes his awareness of “America’s penchant for superlatives: biggest, oldest, first, fastest, best.” He does not list “only” and does pass along a couple of not quite true “only” claims. Qualifying it with the word “purportedly”, he writes that the bust of Lincoln at Wyoming’s Sherman Hill is “…the only statue of Lincoln on the entire Lincoln Highway” and says that the rotary jail in Council Bluffs, IA, “…is the only one of its kind in the US”. Regarding Lincoln statues on the LH, those in Jefferson, IA, and Fremont, NE, come immediately to mind. As for rotating “squirrel cage” jails, the one in Crawfordsville, IN, is not only standing but operational. These errors, and a few others, are not terribly significant but I couldn’t just ignore them.

After Ike is an enjoyable read that delivers an overview of an important event in US transportation history along with a sense of what a modern-day long and leisurely road trip is like. Owen’s fresh eyes and all those signs make it a bit unlike many travelogues.

After Ike: On the Trail of the Century-Old Journey that Changed America, Michael S. Owen, Dog Ear Publishing, LLC, July 22, 2019, 9 x 6 inches, 224 pages, ISBN 978-1457570421
Available through Amazon.

Book Review
Route 36 Ohio to Colorado
Allan McAllister Ferguson

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US-36 is kind of special to me. It is one of just a handful of US highways with an endpoint in my home state and one of just two that pass through my birth county. It’s even more special to Allan Ferguson. He grew up near the route in Illinois, has ancestral connections to the eastern end in Ohio, and currently lives near its western end in Colorado. It has had a role in much of his life from childhood vacations and visits to relatives to business trips and drives between old and new homes as an adult. Not all of his travels between Colorado and Illinois have been on Route 36. Not surprisingly, his early trips back home were on expressways. At some point, he tried US-36 and came to realize three things. The first was that it took no more time than driving the interstates. Between Denver and central Illinois, the US-36 is quite straight and about 100 miles shorter than either I-70 or I-80. Secondly, it was relaxing rather than stressful. The third thing he realized was that the drive was actually interesting and that realization eventually led to this book.

Ferguson stresses that this is “a book about today’s Route 36″ (italics his). He delivers plenty of history and even describes a few older alignments, but the subject of this book is the Route 36 shown on current maps and marked by modern signs. That means there are no turn-by-turn directions that fans of historic routes such as the Lincoln Highway or Route 66 might expect in a guide to a road. And there is another possible expectation that Ferguson intentionally does not meet. There are no lists of restaurants or places to stay. This sort of information is, he points out, ever-changing and available elsewhere.

Today’s US-36 runs through six states in connecting Uhrlichville, Ohio, with Estes Park, Colorado. There is a chapter for each of those states. Following an overview, which provides some history, geography, and geology, a drive through the state is described. Both the chapters and the drives are sequenced east-to-west. The basic organization is by town. Each town entry begins with some common items such as population and a website address. Museums, parks, and libraries are also listed where they exist. Descriptions of various well-researched points of interest, often with photographs, follow.

I know that all sounds rather formulaic, which it probably is, and maybe dry and boring, which it decidedly is not. Good writing makes for easy reading and the quality of Ferguson’s writing makes even this fact-heavy subject matter go down smoothly. In particular, I found the state overviews a very pleasant way to be informed.

A Section II, titled “Background,” follows the guide. A very well-done history of land transportation across the United States, its two chapters divide the story more or less at the appearance of the automobile. This history is not specific to US-36 and reading it is not at all necessary for enjoying a drive along the route. Depending on your own background, it can be a very nice introduction or a very nice review.

Naturally, many of the place names in the guide were familiar to me and I was pleasantly surprised to see a familiar “people name” in there, too. Road fan Jim Grey has documented a number of roads at JimGrey.net. Of course, Ferguson’s interest and recommendation was aimed at Jim’s photo-rich report on US-36 between Indianapolis and the Illinois border. I’ll second Ferguson’s recommendation and add that Jim’s reports on several other old roads — and lots of old cameras — are also worthwhile.

Some of those familiar place names come from the fact that I’ve driven certain bits of Thirty-Six hundreds of times. I have, however, driven the whole thing only once. This book’s east to west order matched the direction of my single full-length pass which made it easy to compare the book with my own memories and journal. I’m glad it wasn’t a competition. I documented very little that Ferguson didn’t, while he identified many points of interest that I missed entirely. I’ll do better next time.

The book has its own website at US36GuideBook.

Route 36: Ohio to Colorado – America’s Heartland Highway, Allan McAllister Ferguson, WFPublishing, August 1, 2019, 10 x 8 inches, 264 pages, ISBN 978-0971032668
Available through Amazon.

Cambridge Spirit(s)

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Like the one a fortnight earlier, last Sunday was preceded by a very blog-worthy Saturday that just had to wait because the weekly blog slot was already filled. Again, I’m calling that good since it gave me all week to produce this post rather than trying to put it together overnight. If I had, it’s certain that it would contain fewer pictures and more mistakes. The actual target of my trip was Zanesville, Ohio, but that’s close enough to Cambridge that I drove over to visit the annual Dickens Victorian Village. As things turned out, Cambridge and the figures that line its streets during the holidays get almost the entire post.

There are nearly 200 of the life-sized figures. Each is unique and dressed in Victorian-era clothing. They are grouped into 90-some scenes. Some come directly from a Charles Dickens story while others represent sights the author might have encountered walking around nineteenth-century England.

This is the village’s fourteenth year, and I believe this is at least the fourth time I’ve visited. The bulk of the figures are placed along Wheeling Avenue which once carried the National Road. The road and a bridge pictured on that panel will be mentioned again before this article ends.

The Guernsey County Historical Society offered two “living” tours of Cambridge’s Old City Cemetery and I made it to the second one. The first resident we met was Sophia Gibout, Sophia was a washerwoman who died in 1865 after living in Cambridge for many years. Being familiar with other residents — both before and after their move to the cemetery — she accompanied us as a guide. The lady with the white muff is Elizabeth Taylor, wife of Joseph Taylor. The Taylors figured prominently in Cambridge’s early history. A newspaper and hotel were among their contributions and Joseph served in the U.S. House of Representatives. Isaac Oldham, the fellow in the third photo, settled in the area before Cambridge was established.

The American Civil War was naturally a major chapter in the history of Cambridge and these three figures have some interesting personal connections to it. Before serving in the war, James Adair walked to California to join the gold rush of 1849, made his fortune in the goldfields, then returned to Ohio by taking a ship south to the isthmus of Panama, traveling across it, and heading north on another ship. Captain Adair was killed in Virginia in 1962 and his body returned to Cambridge for burial. John Cook was killed by an unknown assailant in March of 1865. The murderer and an accomplice were eventually tracked down and a major trial, which overlapped that of Lincoln’s assassins, resulted in both being hanged. The gentleman in the tophat is C.P.B. Sarchet. He survived the war after reaching the rank of colonel then developed a reputation as a great historian. He was born in 1828 which he proudly pointed out was the same year that the National Road came through and that double covered bridge on the panel downtown was built. The bridge stood until washed away by the flood of 1913. Colonel Sarchet died a few weeks later.

We walked back to where we had first met Sophia and where Elizabeth was waiting. Like Paul Harvey, Elizabeth wanted to make sure we knew the rest of Sophia’s story. She was well-liked in the town and at her death friends arranged for a proper burial. It was then that the undertaker discovered that the washerwoman was physically a man. That simple revelation ended the “living” tour and started some personal brain activity. I’ve read of nineteenth-century women disguising themselves as men in order to join the military, drive a stagecoach, or participate in some other activity otherwise denied them. This was something different. There are essentially no reasons that would justify choosing to live as a lower-class female in the early 1800s. Sophia Gibout’s story should make anyone who believes that questions of gender identity are a 21st-century phenomenon think just a little deeper.

Following the “living” tour, a presentation on tombstone symbols was provided by Randy Neff of the Guernsey County Genealogical Society. In the photo, Randy is standing beside a tombstone showing a pair of hands. The hand on the viewer’s left represents the deceased. It is always stiff and lifeless and is gripped by the other hand which may represent an already deceased spouse or other relative. A hand coming from a cloud represents the hand of God himself pulling the newly deceased into Heaven.

It was now that l realized my great blunder. I had driven to the area for the purpose of attending a gathering of the Ohio National Road Association. It was on my phone calendar for 7:00 PM. As I left the cemetery, I considered driving the short distance east to Wheeling, West Virginia, where one of my favorite bridges had recently been closed. I can’t explain why I only now double-checked the phone calendar with the original ONRA mailing, but that’s what I did. My intent was to determine with certainty whether or not if I had time to drive to Wheeling and back to Zanesville. What I discovered was that the information on my phone was terribly wrong. The gathering was a 12:00 lunch, not a 7:00 dinner. I had plenty of time to drive to Wheeling because I had already completely missed the event.

The 1849 Wheeling suspension bridge was closed in late September due to continuing violations of weight limits. I didn’t expect to discover anything new but my basic curiosity prompted me to take a look since I was fairly close. The result is a picture of a bridge closed sign.

Anticipating an evening spent with National Road fans near Zanesville, I had a motel reserved nearby. The sun set while I was in Wheeling which gave me an opportunity to stop in Cambridge for a look at the wonderful light show at the Guernsey county courthouse. 

Abandoned Delaware County Roadmeet

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This happened a week ago yesterday and would have been a fine subject for last week’s post if that slot hadn’t already been taken. Last Tuesday was Election Day which means the preceding Sunday was filled by my annual screed on voting. I don’t see that as a bad thing since it spared me working in Sunday’s wee hours (one of which went missing) to get this post together. The opening picture is not of one of the meet’s scheduled attractions but of one of the locals who joined us in looking out over Hoover Reservation from the Oxbow Road Boat Ramp.

The Delaware County of the title is in central Ohio directly north of Columbus. The roadmeet differed from others I’ve attended in multiple ways. In my experience, roadmeets tend to focus on new or recent developments. This time, as the name implies, the focus was on older and often abandoned structures. Timing was another difference. Previous meets I’ve attended were in warm summer months. Autumn was intentionally selected for this meet in hopes of improved visibility through trees that had shed many of their leaves. The cooler weather many have also been a factor in turn-out. There were just five attendees with one of those dropping out early in response to a message from home. The Facebook event entry is here.

One other way this meet differed from others was in the amount of off-road travel involved. The pictured trail hadn’t always been off-road, however, and patches of old Sunbury Road pavement can be seen here and there through the leaves. Bridge abutments where the road once crossed Big Walnut Creek are at the end of the trail.

Not everything we looked over was actually abandoned. This covered bridge on Chambers Road is still in use. Originally constructed by E.S. Sherman in 1883, it has been rebuilt at least twice. It is the last of its kind still standing in Delaware County.

Not only was not everything abandoned, some things weren’t even in Delaware County. These two bridges are within about half a mile of each other on Morrow County Road 225. The pony truss bridge was built in 2000 across an unnamed tributary of Alum Creek. What makes it interesting is what it was built on top of. That stone arch has been there for a very long time. The through truss bridge hasn’t. Built in 1876, its original location was near the Morrow County Fairgrounds. It’s unknown when it was moved to its current location on Alum Creek. One possibility is during major rehabilitation in 1942.

We got back on message with a stop at these abandoned bridge abutments in Delaware County. Before the Delaware Reservoir flooded the area, the Water Hill covered bridge crossed Whetstone Creek here. That’s roadmeet organizer Sandor Gulyas standing on the nearside abutment. Not only did Sandor provide a detailed map and overview, he shared lots of additional information at every stop.

Technically, these stone bridge piers aren’t abandoned; They were never used. They were built in the 1850s as part of a proposed Springfield-Mt. Vernon-Pittsburg Railroad that was only partially completed. One more stop was planned but the sun was rapidly approaching the horizon and we decided not to even try. Recent rain had scared us away from a couple of other planned stops but we got to nearly all of them. And I really enjoyed each one.

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I spent the night in the Columbus area with thoughts of taking in a little music somewhere but found nothing that fit my desires. Breakfast was a different matter. Some online research turned up several places that sounded interesting and tasty, but it was Gena’s Restaurant that got my business. I once drove for days to reach the “Cinnamon Bun Centre of the Galactic Cluster” so I could surely drive a few miles to the “Home of the Greatest American Pecan Roll”.

Inside, some wall space is devoted to the pecan roll boast and to their “Three Pancake Challenge”. There are photos of those who have downed three one-pound pancakes in forty-five minutes along with a few who have downed four and fewer who have downed five. Downing the pictured pecan roll was no challenge at all, and I will not challenge its claim to being the “greatest”.