SOCIETY for
COMMERCIAL
ARCHEOLOGY
Advocates for
America’s
Roadside Heritage
2018 SCA Mini-Conference
On the Bus to Blobfest – Another meandering, kitsch-filled SCA mini-conference wrapped up last month as members and friends gathered for “SCA at Blobfest.”
READ WRAP-UP
SOCIETY for
COMMERCIAL
ARCHEOLOGY
Advocates for
America’s
Roadside Heritage
2018 SCA Mini-Conference
On the Bus to Blobfest
Another meandering, kitsch-filled SCA mini-conference wrapped up last month as members and friends gathered for “SCA at Blobfest.”
READ WRAP-UP
SOCIETY for
COMMERCIAL
ARCHEOLOGY
2018 SCA Mini-Conference
On the Bus to Blobfest
Another meandering, kitsch-filled SCA mini-conference wrapped up last month as members and friends gathered for “SCA at Blobfest.”
READ WRAP-UP
Advocates for
America’s
Roadside Heritage
We invite you to join our group of offbeat academics, old sign junkies and quirky roadside attraction enthusiasts on a road trip through time.
The Society for Commercial Archeology is the oldest national organization devoted to the buildings, artifacts, structures, signs and symbols of the 20th-century commercial landscape.
Photo ©2018 Molly Block
We publish the prestigious SCA Journal and SCA Road Notes (online here). We also host annual events and conferences, bring attention to preservation challenges and opportunities, publish tour guides and maintain a very active Facebook page.
Read more about what we do, check out upcoming events and to subscribe to our free email newsletter.
Photo ©2018 Molly Block
We invite you to join our group of offbeat academics, old sign junkies and quirky roadside attraction enthusiasts on a road trip through time.
The Society for Commercial Archeology is the oldest national organization devoted to the buildings, artifacts, structures, signs and symbols of the 20th-century commercial landscape.
We publish the prestigious SCA Journal and SCA Road Notes (online here). We also host annual events and conferences, focus attention on preservation challenges and opportunities, publish tour guides and maintain a very active Facebook page.
Read more about what we do, check out upcoming events and to subscribe to our free email newsletter.
Upcoming Events
JOIN US JULY 13 – 15 FOR SCA @ BLOBFEST 2018!
Mod Betty of Retro Roadmap and SCA invite you to the Philadelphia area for our terrifyingly terrific 2018 tour! We’ll experience part of Blobfest, an annual festival commemorating the original 1958 camp classic, THE BLOB, before heading west to along the historic Lincoln Highway through Amish Country to the quirky Haines Shoe House. Our weekend will wrap up with a special SCA-exclusive tour of Philly’s best commercial architecture.
SCA Articles
Miss Alma Makes a Bee Line: A Story of One Woman and Two Auto Trails
As the first female transcontinental highway booster, Alma Rittenberry had promoted her Jackson Highway not only as a memorial to the former President nicknamed “Old Hickory,” but as a progressive path to get farmers out of the mud and a source of “financial and cultural gain” for the North and South.
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Five Faves: Seeing Ghosts in Upstate New York
MEMBERS ONLY – Should we let ghost signs fade or should we repaint them? This is not an easy question to answer. Repainted ghosts can anchor a neighborhood’s rehabilitation effort. But repainting also means the ghosts are no longer ghosts.
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Exposing the “Motel Menace”
FULL ARTICLE By Lyell Henry – The tourist camps that had at first been hailed as delightful expressions of American character and genius now were as likely to be viewed as hotbeds of sordidness and immorality, even as “Camps of Crime,” said J. Edgar Hoover.
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Five Faves: Las Vegas Neon Museum
By Heather David – In 2007, the Las Vegas Neon Museum consisted of little more than a random assortment of rescued signs in a dirt lot. Visiting was still an incredible experience. It has only gotten better!
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Motel Moderne: Yesterday’s Motels of Tomorrow
By Andrew Wood – Early twentieth-century motels reflect an emerging Age of Mobility that promised perpetual motion through a fluid continuum of consumer experiences.
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SCA Articles
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SCA Journal Back Issues | SCA Road Notes Back Issues
Road Trip!
From the Black Hills of South Dakota to the Jersey Shore, with stops at just about every diner in between, we love our road trips! Join us, and join us on our next adventure.
Upcoming EventsJournal & More
Among the many benefits of SCA membership are our two outstanding printed publications, the SCA Journal and SCA Road Notes. Excerpts here, with full access for members.
Why You Should JoinGet Published!
The SCA offers quality publication opportunities for preservation professionals, academics, authors, independent scholars and enthusiasts. We can’t wait to publish you!
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News & Advocacy
SCA Weekly News Review: 8/6-8/12/18
Edited by SCA board member Raina Regan, in this week’s post we tour the Cadillac Ranch, the reopened airplane filling station, landmark signs as suggested by the readers of Atlas Obscura and more.
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Sam’s Park & Shop
Many people are perplexed as to why Sam’s Park & Shop in Cleveland Park is a historical landmark. While it may look like an ordinary strip mall, the Park & Shop was one of the first examples of retail architecture designed around the automobile.
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SCA@Blobfest: A Recap of Our 2018 Event
By Jeremy Ebersol –Another meandering, gut-busting, kitsch-filled SCA mini-conference wrapped up last month as members and friends gathered for “SCA at Blobfest” from July 13-15.
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News & Advocacy