The Goshen meeting and the Deep River tour were meant to appeal to everyone. Our November non-meeting may well not. Wear your bluejeans. Wear your mud boots. Bring your maps. Don't forget your snake stick. We shall do some hands-on looking around old roadway segments.
Anyone is welcome to join us but we will be walking stretches of pavement, scampering over abutments, peering into old culverts, and otherwise annoying small animals. Those sticking to your cars may become rather bored waiting for us as we giggle and poke around at each stop.
A good, easy point to meet at and start from is U.S. 30 at (Allen-Whitley) County Line Road. I cannot picture that intersection so can only say that we will group at the most assembly-friendly of the four corners.
We will immediately leave the current U.S. 30 however, heading north to the earlier route. Not the earliest route through South Bend -- the one through Columbia City. We'll be staying off the current bypass route of 30. We won't be bypassing nuttin'.
How long will we keep on? How far will we cover? That is up to those who show up. This is a non-structured free-play day. That is Veterans' Day weekend. That is a Sunday. If you already have other plans, ok. Have fun. We will.
That (heritage tourism) is what we ought to start thinking about here for the Indiana Lincoln Highways. Our chapter consists mostly of history buffs or auto buffs. We are going to have to start drawing in and working with the business community, as chapters have done in other states. That is how the Illinois Lincoln Highway was made a National Scenic Byway this year, an enjoyable ceremony for which was held in Aurora recently.
We LHA members share some interests with the tourism and commerical people along Indiana's Lincolns, as well as with the museums and local historical groups across our state. It behooves us to further those ties. The state director (me) is available for giving talks or slide shows about the LH to local groups. A couple are arranged for next month.
One booking has already born fruit, as the historical society's newsletter editor dug up an old newspaper article concerning the affect the Lincoln Highway had on that city, as the route chosen in 1913 bypassed them. There are lots of little pieces of the Lincoln Highway story floating around out there. More bits will float in the more contacts we make.
Sometimes it takes repeated contacts. I participated in an Indiana Historical Society conference in Merrillville recently. The audience heard that I was a Lincoln Hwy. Assoc. director, although we did not get into LH history itself. Will somebody sometime later casually come to me and pass along some little nugget of info about the Lincoln Highway? 'Could be. It has happened before. Even just my wearing a Lincoln Hwy. pin has sometimes gotten someone else talking.
We have to keep putting the LH name out there, reminding people of its place in our national history. Sure the Lincoln Highway is the most historical and important road of all time on the whole planet but we must continue to point that out to everyone. It has not yet soaked in on some of them.
Most of us took a look at the Elkhart County Courthouse when we were in Goshen for our April meeting. Fort Wayne's namesake dated from rather an earlier era than the LH but there is now a reconstruction of it north of downtown. The fort was looking for new owners, the last I heard.
The make-up of the truck train which is under the command of Captain Bernard McMahon is as follows:
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This page is at http://www.lincoln.tripod.com/nwsltr/3-4.html.
Web-published 31st October, 2000, and altered 2nd October, 2003
