Dr. Patrick’s Postcard Roadside

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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Hot food from a coin-operated slot in the wall? Cheap. Automatic. Modern. And so 1902.
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After crossing the Eastern Continental Divide in Highlands, North Carolina, US 64 drops down the west slope of the Blue Ridge via Cullasaja Gorge passing a series of waterfalls including Bridal Veil Falls.
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The Georgian Revival hotel block was a symbol that a small, mid-American city growing since becoming a railroad junction in the 1880s or 1890s had by the 1920s achieved the status of someplace among the galaxy of other towns on the prairie.
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Howard Patrick and Norman Marsh combined their names and opened El Segundo, California’s Patmars Drive-in at Imperial Highway & Sepulveda Boulevard in 1939.
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Downtowners, Rowntowners and five stories of breeze block in Danville, Virginia!
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This circa 1930 postcard of Husted Cabins on US 40 between Marshall and Clark Center, Illinois, captures a time during the early auto age when farmers lucky enough to be on a major trunk route reaped a windfall of auto-oriented commerce.
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