I knew long ago that I would be attending the 2024 Jefferson Highway Association Conference in Alexandria, LA, but only recently decided to also join the pre-conference sociability run. The first day of my expressway-centered drive to the start of the run had been posted and updates from the run and the conference will follow. The journal is here.
This picture is from my 2016 trip to the Jefferson Highway Association Conference in Carthage, Missouri. The picture at right is of artist Lowell Davis in front of his home in Red Oak II. The Jefferson Highway once ran north and south through Carthage and US-66 once ran through east and west. Red Oak II is a little outside of Carthage and sits on neither historic highway which qualifies it as a must-stop for both. Conference presentations took place at an event center right across the road which allowed us to simply stroll over when time permitted. The two-day conference was at the center of a ten-day trip which meant there were many stops, at mostly familiar sites, both going and coming. I even worked in a concert in Tulsa after the conference ended. I missed the conference’s bus tour as it was the same day as the Celebration of the Life of Laurel Kane, who had died in January, at her beloved Afton Station.
The sequence in which Trip Peeks are used is random and determined in advance. They are then used when needed. That this Trip Peek is published so soon after Lowell’s death on November 2 is certainly a striking coincidence.
ADDENDUM 31-Oct-2022: I just now discovered that this post is a repeat (repeek?). The 2016 JHA conference was also the subject of the 29-Nov-19 post. Not only is the sequence random, it’s also kind of sloppy.
Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full-sized photo and the associated trip journal.
This picture is from my 2015 trip to the Jefferson Highway Association Conference in Muskogee, OK. The three-day conference, my first JHA event, anchored a thirteen-day trip. The outing included a bit of Route 66 and all of the Jefferson Highway in Oklahoma. I experienced some sadness on Sixty-Six as this was my first visit to the Gasconade Bridge after its 2014 closing and to Gay Parita after the death of Gary Turner, its creator, in January. The bridge’s fate is still undetermined but Gary’s daughter has stepped in to reopen the popular station for travelers. The route home included some US-82 and US-70 and Arkansas’ Dollarway Road that was built in 1914 at a dollar (actually $1.36) per foot. A personal highlight of the trip was meeting Billy Tripp of Mind Field fame.
Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full-sized photo and the associated trip journal.
This picture is from my 2016 trip to the Jefferson Highway Association Conference in Carthage, Missouri. Conference presentations were in a center across the road from Red Oak II and wrapped up early enough that attendees could cross over for a look. This was my second visit to the whimsical town but my first time meeting its creator, Lowell Davis. After graciously posing for the photo at right, Lowell treated me and Mike and Sharon Curtis to a tour of his home and a look at some of his classic artwork. The next day was bus tour day but I skipped it for something more important. Route 66 icon Laurel Kane had died the previous January and friends and family gathered at her beloved Afton Station this day to celebrate her life.
I drove some Jefferson Highway, of course, but I also drove some Historic Route 66, US-60, US-62, and even a little Dixie Highway. The range of stops was about as wide as any trip I’ve taken. They included Apple Valley Toyland, Gary Turner’s (reopened by his daughter) Gay Parita, the Woody Guthrie Center, an Ian Moore concert in Tulsa, Monte Ne, Eureka Springs, Branson (really just a drive-by), Cairo (IL), the Everly Brothers Museum, and Bill Monroe’ birthplace. Yeah, I can’t guess what the theme was either.
Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full-sized photo and the associated trip journal.
I’m on my way to the 2019 Jefferson Highway Association Conference and I’m taking a much shorter route than I did last year. Instead of driving from Cincinnati to Winnipeg to Saint Joseph, I’m following an almost perfectly aligned southwest diagonal directly to Natchitoches, Louisiana. I was on the road for ten days before reaching the conference last year. This year it will be just three and one of them is already over and posted.
This entry is to let blog only subscribers know about the trip and to provide a place for comments. The journal is here.
Too soon? What had been my most recent travelogue, A Canadian Connection, was published less than three months ago and I tend to agree with anyone thinking these paperbacks are appearing just a little too close together. But the facts are that neither the timing nor the sequence of these books was exactly arbitrary. Before I had finished writing 50 @ 70, I knew I had to produce a book covering the Canadian portion of that drive to and from Alaska, and before I had finished driving from Winnipeg to New Orleans last spring, I knew I had to produce a book covering that full-length drive of the Jefferson Highway. Then, in a manner similar to the scheduling of many road trips, I started working backward. It seemed reasonable to target release of the Jefferson Highway book ahead of the 2019 JHA conference. If there was any appetite for the book at all, it would likely peak about the time of the conference. That meant publication by early April (i.e., now). It also seemed desirable to have the tale of the Canadian portion of the Alaska trip follow the U.S. portion of the trip in 50 @ 70 without another book in between. So the sequence and overall timing was set and has come to pass. For the present, the travelogue job jar is empty.
All five existing Trip Mouse books tell stories of road trips. They are not guidebooks even though photographs and descriptions of points of interest are plentiful. All five share a common format, but the latest resembles the first a bit more closely than the others. A Decade Driving the Dixie Highway describes the many trips required to cover all of the network of roads that comprised the Dixie Highway system. Similarly, 50 @ 70 tells of multiple trips that passed through the last sixteen of fifty states. Even A Canadian Connection, which deals with a single journey, consists of northbound and southbound segments with a gap (Alaska) in between. Only By Mopar to the Golden Gate (which could have been called Lincoln Highway All the Way) and Jefferson Highway All the Way tell of a single end-to-end drive of a single historic named auto trail.
Jefferson Highway All the Way tells a little of the history of the original Jefferson Highway Association and the route it defined. It also touches on the formation of the modern JHA in 2011. But the bulk of the book concerns the events and sights (There are about 140 photos.) of that 2018 drive.
Jefferson Highway All the Way, Denny Gibson, Trip Mouse Publishing, 2019, paperback, 9 x 6 inches, 154 pages, ISBN 978-1796535280.
Signed copies available through eBay. Unsigned copies available through Amazon.
Reader reviews at Amazon are appreciated and helpful and can be submitted even if you didn’t purchase the book there.
On Monday, the temperature in Cincinnati plummeted into the 30s and there were snowflakes in the air. I took that as a sign to leave town so I did. And headed north. I don’t mean just a few-miles-to-Dayton north but a few-miles-into-Canada north. On the surface, that must appear even more logic defying than my most recent trip to chilly Pittsburgh but it’s really not as dumb as it sounds. My target in Canada is Winnipeg, Manitoba. Almost as soon as I reach there, I’ll start south on my first full length drive of the Jefferson Highway and that will take me to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. “Pine to Palm” as the highway’s nickname promises. Near the midpoint, I’ll pause for a few days to attend the 7th Annual Jefferson Highway Association Conference in Saint Joseph, Missouri. At the end, I’ll pause a few days to visit my NOLA resident oldest son.
This entry is to let blog only subscribers now about the trip and to provide a place for comments. The journal is here.
In its preface, Lyell D. Henry Jr. suggests that this book is something of a compromise. The reason is that he once set out to write about every detail of the Jefferson Highway and the association behind it. That’s a lot of details and, especially with no known central source for records or maps, a formidable task. Henry says he “…settled on writing a book that would open with a general accounting of JHA’s early pursuit of the entire highway but then narrow its focus to the highway through Iowa.” The Jefferson Highway: Blazing the Way from Winnipeg to New Orleans is indeed a book of two parts. The first four chapters cover the history of the organization responsible for the entire highway; The last three tell the story and describe the route of the road in Iowa. The scale may be less and the focus may be narrower than what Henry once had in mind but, within that narrowed focus, there is certainly no detectable compromising of accuracy or completeness.
The Jefferson Highway was one of the more significant named auto trails of the early twentieth century. The association promoting it was created in November of 1915 and the highway, like all named auto trails, effectively ceased to be when the Numbered US Highways were established in November of 1926. A modern day Jefferson Highway Association formed in 2011.
The featured players in those first four chapters are men at the top of the Jefferson Highway Association. Men like its founder, Edwin T. Meredith, its first General Manager, James D. Clarkson, and a few others. Likewise, the routeing discussions and decisions presented are those affecting the basic overall course of the highway. Particularly with this being the first book written on the Jefferson Highway in many decades, I thought this a sensible approach. Other leaders and other decisions certainly played important roles in specific states or regions and many that affected Iowa are discussed in the last three chapters. Henry writes that he hopes others will undertake similar projects for the other seven Jefferson Highway states in the near future. When they do, the first four chapters of this book could serve as a foundation. As someone without much knowledge of this highway’s history, I saw them as a sort of JH primer.
The second portion of the book is organized as a north to south driving tour with tales of the various routeings and the points of interest beside them woven into the driving directions. There is no denying that one reason Henry writes about Iowa is that it is his home but it is a very reasonable choice for other reasons as well. JHA founder Edwin T. Meredith was an Iowan and the crossing of the Jefferson and Lincoln Highways at Colo, Iowa, gave the state as good a claim as any to being the “Crossroads of America”.
I’ll readily confess that few of the mileage measurements or specific turning instructions really registered with me as I read those last three chapters but I know they will be invaluable when I someday set out to drive the Jefferson Highway. That doesn’t mean those chapters were boring or should be skipped. Descriptions of the many small towns along the way are certainly interesting and Henry provides quite a bit of road and roadside history, too. An example that I particularly enjoyed was learning, for the first time despite driving through it a few times on the Lincoln, just how Iowa’s “Crossroads of America” escaped becoming the “Cloverleaf of America”.
The book is well illustrated with black and white photographs and drawings. Some of the photos are historic but many, particularly in the three “road tour” chapters are quite recent. A majority of these, though far from all, were taken by current JHA treasurer, Scott Berka.
There were hundreds of named auto trails when numbered highway made them all obsolete. Some were little more than a line on a map and some were outright scams. Without question, the JHA was one of what the outfit responsible for those numbers, the American Association of State Highway Officials, called “reputable trail associations”. It’s good to see it getting some twenty-first century literary attention.
Available through Amazon.
I’m on the way to my second Jefferson Highway Association Conference. It’s in Carthage, Missouri, this year. The heart of the conference takes place on Friday and Saturday with some pre-conference welcoming activities planned for Thursday and an optional sociability run available Sunday. I will be attending the Celebration of the Life of Laurel Kane in Afton, Oklahoma, on Saturday so will miss the day’s bus tour but hope to take in some of the sights on my own. I’m getting there on US-60, coming back on US-62, and staying at Boots Court while in Carthage. Beyond that, plans are flimsy. The photo at right is of the spot south of Louisville, Kentucky, where US-60 split from US-31W (Dixie Highway) and started carrying me towards Carthage in earnest.
The journal for the trip is here. This entry is to let blog subscribers know of the trip and to provide a place for comments.
It’s a logical progression. First the Jefferson Highway, then the Jefferson Airplane, and finally the Jefferson Starship. The original Jefferson Highway Association was organized in November of 1915. The current Jefferson Highway Association was organized in 2012. I’m on my way to Muskogee, Oklahoma, where the fourth annual conference of the modern JHA is to take place. I intend to drive part of the Oklahoma portion of the highway on the way to the conference and the remainder after. The centennial of the original JHA will certainly be celebrated during the conference. This is also the year of the Jefferson Airplane’s semicentennial but whether or not there will be a celebration I have not heard. I do know that I’ve not yet received an invitation.
The journal for the trip is here. This entry is to let blog subscribers know of the trip and to hold any and all comments.