Friday Pondering

"JR1" (type35bugatti) 03/22/2019 at 10:28 • Filed to: None

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Why does the Lincoln Highway not receive the same attention and tourism as Route 66? Is it because the road is harder to follow or perhaps the geography is not as appealing?

random001 > JR1 03/22/2019 at 10:39

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Because in modern cars, no one can wear those hats....

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > JR1 03/22/2019 at 10:41

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I’m going to guess some combination of both. Driving through Nebraska doesn’t stir the imagination in the same way as driving through Arizona and romanticized image of the West and all that comes  with it. Combine that with the post-war economic boom and confidence , the true rise of the automobile to being something that literally almost everyone had, and you’ve got the recipe to build a nostalgia-driven, manifest destiny fulfilling legacy for a whole generation of boomers.

Roundbadge > random001 03/22/2019 at 10:42

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The one true answer.

sm70- why not Duesenberg? > JR1 03/22/2019 at 10:45

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Hey you aren’t dead

Future Heap Owner > JR1 03/22/2019 at 10:47

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It’s all about the branding. You have signs on Route 66 constantly reminding you you’re on Route 66, which I think is less true of the Lincoln Highway. The name “Route 66” is shorter and more fun to say than “the Lincoln Highway”. There was a famous novel featuring Route 66, that many many people were assigned to read in school. It’s hard to compete with all that.

It’s like how you could tell nearly instantly who was going to win the  HD disc format wars even knowing nothing about their technical merits, because one had the boring, derivative, long to say and easy-to-confuse-with-the-old-format name “HD-DVD,” and the other had the intriguing, futuristic, and succinct name “Blu-Ray”

LimitedTimeOnly @ opposite-lock.com > JR1 03/22/2019 at 10:53

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When I lived just east of Pittsburgh in the McKeesport/White Oak area , m y address actually was “Lincoln Way ” but the official map shows the route as following Route 30, so, not Lincoln Way, which is confusing.

Maybe Lincoln Highway in some areas just isn’t an appealing road trip. It’s pretty congested, at least around Pittsburgh.

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > Future Heap Owner 03/22/2019 at 10:56

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There’s certainly a branding exercise going on, but at least through Western Nebraska the Lincoln Highway is nearly as well marked as Route 66 is through New Mexico. There’s probably actually more of (or at least newer roads on the same basic alignment) of the Lincoln Highway left in Nebraska than there is of Route 66 here.    

Future Heap Owner > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com 03/22/2019 at 11:00

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Ah, is that going west or east? From looking at the Wikipedia page it seemed like a lot  of the Lincoln Highway now has other names.

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > Future Heap Owner 03/22/2019 at 11:24

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I’m talking about Western NE. Through a lot of towns, original route still exists (often, but not always, as “main street”) and is well marked . Most of Modern US30 follows the same alignment , as in it is literally just built on a newer (and generally much higher, for reduced flooding) roadbed 20 or 30 feet to the side of the original highway. In a lot of places, the crumbling remains of the original road are still very easily spotted . I had a great uncle who up through the late  7 0's refused to drive on I-80, and whenever possible would still drive his old land yachts (slowly) on the original roadbed next to the modern US30. Today you’d need a vehicle without a cat to not start a grass fire to drive on the old roadbed, and many/all drainage crossing have long since been washed away.

JR1 > sm70- why not Duesenberg? 03/22/2019 at 11:35

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Nope just been in law school! 2 months to go though. Also I used to post a lot from my iPad but it never seems to work with Oppo anymore. Very annoying 

JR1 > Future Heap Owner 03/22/2019 at 11:37

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A good point. Popular culture does tend to favor 66. But I wonder if that is a cause or effect of the roads popularity?

I actually didn’t know there was a novel called Route 66 is it worth the read?

JR1 > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com 03/22/2019 at 11:38

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Nebraska might be boring but I assume Oklahoma and Illinois aren’t any more exciting on 66.

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > JR1 03/22/2019 at 11:39

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I imagine that would be a correct assumption.  

JR1 > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com 03/22/2019 at 11:40

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I can see that at the time 66 was a more popular route than the Lincoln Highway would have been. I imagine the boomers probably are the most popular drives on 66 for vacations.

JR1 > LimitedTimeOnly @ opposite-lock.com 03/22/2019 at 11:41

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I think the roadtrip aspect probably isn’t quite as appealing. It could be too that 66 is a shorter drive. Lincoln highway goes from NYC to SF. 66 only goes from Chicago to LA

ranwhenparked > JR1 03/22/2019 at 11:58

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Because Kmart never used Lincoln Highway for a line of store brand denim?

JR1 > ranwhenparked 03/22/2019 at 12:25

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Kmart used Route 66 as storebrand denim? Awesome 

ranwhenparked > JR1 03/22/2019 at 12:37

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Yep, I remember getting a lot of it in the 90s. I was pretty into cars as a kid, too, so noticed that. 

Future Heap Owner > JR1 03/22/2019 at 13:16

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It’s true that cause and effect are intermingled in a positive feedback loop. But I do think the pleasant succinctness of the “Route 66” name helped get that loop off the ground in the first place.

The novel I was referring to is John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath,” wherein a family travels from Oklahoma to California along Route 66,  to start a new life during the Great Depression.

JR1 > Future Heap Owner 03/22/2019 at 13:20

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Oh yes I have read that book. I guess I just didn’t consider Route 66 a central theme but I did read it when I was a 13 year old anxiety teenager. 

Future Heap Owner > JR1 03/22/2019 at 13:27

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I mean it wasn’t really, so “featured” was a poor choice words, but it was mentioned enough, and the book was such widely-assigned middle school/high school reading that it gave Route 66 a huge mindshare boost that the  Lincoln Highway never got.

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > JR1 03/22/2019 at 16:30

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It’s because “get your kicks on the Lincoln Highway” doesn’t rhyme.

ranwhenparked > LimitedTimeOnly @ opposite-lock.com 03/22/2019 at 20:41

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When I was in elementary school, I remember being shown a documentary about a road trip down the Lincoln Highway in our Pennsylvanian history class.

I have no idea what the title was, but I think it was from a PBS station. Seemed like there was a lot of interesting spots to check out, old motels, diners, museums, scenic places, tourist traps, etc. All the stuff Route 66 is famous for, just with more trees and greenery. Would like to try to figure out what that film was.

I remember there was an old 1920s motel that some group was trying to save from demolition by selling off all the cabins dirt cheap to anyone that would haul them away. 

LimitedTimeOnly @ opposite-lock.com > ranwhenparked 03/22/2019 at 21:47

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It sounds like you’re describing a Rick Sebak show, he did so many about Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania! It looks like he did one in 2015 on the Lincoln Highway!

https://www.pbs.org/show/ride-along-lincoln-highway/

ranwhenparked > LimitedTimeOnly @ opposite-lock.com 03/22/2019 at 21:49

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This would have been way, way older. I think I saw it in around 1995ish, and it seemed like it was fairly old then - so I want to say it was maybe from the 1980s or possibly late ‘70s. 

gmporschenut also a fan of hondas > JR1 03/22/2019 at 23:10

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I think the same reason the dixie highway is forgottten.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Highway

JR1 > gmporschenut also a fan of hondas 03/24/2019 at 20:42

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You are probably right. Wh at I find most interesting about the Dixie Highway is in Florida the Collier family helped finance the road to develop Naples 

gmporschenut also a fan of hondas > JR1 03/24/2019 at 21:39

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I think that was similar to Miami, which was mostly uninhabited swamp

Thinking of the Dixi highway, I think another issue is that there were 2 different routes north/south.

Route 66 has the dust bowl migration, and early 50 roadtips to cement it in place.