Bloomington Unveils Route 66 Experience Hub
Bloomington mayor Tari Renner unvailed the Route 66 experience hub at Main and Jefferson streets. ERIC STOCK / WGLT
From GLT 89.1FM: Route 66 enthusiasts can find a new way to connect with the historic highway.
Bloomington Mayor Tari Renner joined other city officials in braving the freezing cold on Monday afternoon to unveil a new Route 66 experience hub.
The interactive kiosk at Main and Jefferson streets downtown details tourist attractions along the Mother Road and tells some of its history.
Renner said the display will further help the city capitalize on Route 66 travelers, just as the nearby Route 66 Visitors Center has done.
Brookshire Motel makes list of Oklahoma’s Most Endangered Places
From Fox 23 News: TULSA, Okla. – A historic Route 66 landmark in Tulsa is now listed as one of Oklahoma’s Most Endangered Places.
The Brookshire Motel along Route 66 at 11th Street is at risk of being torn down if it is not repaired — landing it on the 2019 list announced by Preservation Oklahoma.
Louisville’s Green Book: Why buildings once essential to black travelers keep vanishing
The old Pythian Temple at 10th and Chestnut is now a YMCA in Louisville. March 6, 2019. Matt Stone/Courier Journal
From Courier Journal: In the years before the civil rights act opened the doors of restaurants, barbershops, hotels and other businesses to African-Americans, black visitors to towns across America relied on the Green Book.
It was a brochure published by Victor Hugo Green, a Harlem mail carrier, that listed all the places where black travelers could stop without fear of being turned away, harassed or even beaten and killed.
“Carry your Green Book with you. You may need it,” the cover of the “Negro Motorist Green Book” said year after year.
Out of Gas
From ABC 21 WPTA: FORT WAYNE, IND. (WPTA21)-It was motoring’s Golden Age, when America was discovering herself in the increasingly popular automobile. And the grandest road built to handle that growing traffic was the Lincoln Highway running coast to coast, opening up vistas lucky travelers had only seen in books. To feed all those automobiles countless little gas stations popped up, charming structures offering gas and basic car repairs and not much else. In the hundred years since most of those buildings were demolished, some were repurposed and others remain unsure of their fate.
“It represents a development in the style of filling stations when they moved from along the roads into residential neighborhoods,” explains historian Connie Haas Zuber.
Big in B.C.: 10 of the province’s record-breaking, giant roadside attractions
Fans of Howard, the world’s tallest gnome, are campaigning to find a new home for the beloved Nanoose landmark, which is in need of life-saving repairs. FACEBOOK / TIMES COLONIST
From the Vancouver Sun: The world’s tallest garden gnome is on his last legs in the Vancouver Island community of Nanoose Bay.
Known as Howard, the 7.91-metre-tall gnome has been a beloved local landmark for over 20 years, and would be for 20 more, if not for two huge problems: first, he’s got a rotten base. Second, its current owner, Calgary’s Parkland Fuel Corp., has said Howard will be dismantled by the end of April if he isn’t removed by then.
Beyond repair at Santa Fe’s fading Western Scene?
Savita Bhakta stands outside the business office last month at the Western Scene Motel on Cerrillos Road. She and her daughter, Rita Bhakta, were cleaning out space where Savita had been living. Luis Sánchez Saturno/The New Mexican
From the Santa Fe-New Mexican (via Keith Sculle): A vintage postcard featuring the Western Scene Motel shows the Cerrillos Road motor court bathed in warm sunlight, its golden stucco silhouetted against a turquoise sky with puffy white clouds.
The text on the back of the card calls the property “One of the Finer Motels in ‘The City Different,’ ” boasting a “Telephone in Every Room. T-V and Music … All Credit Cards Honored.”
Initially called the Western Holiday Motel, the place dates back to the golden age of Route 66 — a time when roadside motor courts and filling stations sprung up across the West to satisfy America’s mid-20th-century love affair with cross-country adventure. It was a monument to put-the-top-down vacations and convenient stays near the heart of mysterious and suddenly accessible Santa Fe.