Dr. Patrick’s Postcard Roadside

The magic of Magic Forest was its willingness to mix roadside wonders from wherever.
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Denver, Colorado’s Overland Park was the king of the municipal campgrounds established during the early 20th century’s “automobiling” craze, a nationwide fascination with the new-found freedom of the automobile that put millions on the road looking for places to camp-out.
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The Bok Tower was designed to be a sculptural set piece in a garden, an architectural folly housing a carillon. You cannot get up it for a view of the countryside; it is the view.
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The snazzy ‘60s graphics surrounding a lower-cased hotel harris floating in isolated, midcentury Modern splendor was the final chapter for a stalwart hotel that had been in downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan, since 1844.
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When H.J. Whitley laid out Hollywood in 1903, booze and theaters were prohibited. But Los Angeles, which annexed the development in 1910, had no such restrictions.
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Years before the Interstates, New Orleans bound motorists traveled down US 11 from Birmingham, Chattanooga and points north and on the eastern edge of the city joined the traffic of US 90 westbound from Mobile and the Florida Panhandle.
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For every Yellowstone there is a West Yellowstone, a “Gateway Town” of tourist services and diversions that is the commercial opposite of the natural splendor preserved within the boundaries of an adjacent national park.
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This 1940s postcard suggests Toffenetti’s 1,000-seat “Cathedral of All Restaurants” was synonymous with New York and New York with Toffenetti’s, which was largely true to Times Square visitors of the Postwar era.
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It was a challenge to affix Main Street signage to pre-Modern buildings because the architecture got in the way.
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Cedar Hedges Cabins outside Searsport, Maine, was one of many cabin courts operating along US 1 in the 1930s.
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The automobile rediscovered long-distance roads forgotten since the rise of the railroads, and then reshaped them to suit their purpose.
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Southern Belles and Bathing Beauties dress up a giant map of Florida made from grapefruits and oranges for tourists on the electric boat tour at Cypress Gardens.
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