Rick Sebak’s latest documentary, “A Ride Along the Lincoln Highway,” premiered on PBS on October 29. If you missed it, your local PBS station will probably show it again sometime this weekend — be sure to check your local listings. (For example, KQED in San Francisco is showing it tonight at 6 PM and Wednesday at 2 AM.) You also buy it online at Shop PBS.

It made it onto the “must see” list of many newspapers. Here is some of the more notable press coverage:

• PBS motors along Lincoln Highway, South Bend (IN) Tribune, October 25, 2008
• One street, so many names, Courier News (Bridgewater, NJ), October 26, 2008
• Tuned In: In search of the Lincoln Highway, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 26, 2008
• Sebak chronicles quintessential cross-country trip, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, October 28, 2008
• Soundtrack stands out in Route 30 travelogue, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, October 28, 2008
• Beehive State is part of this ‘Ride Along’, Deseret News (Salt Lake City, UT), October 28, 2008
• A Chance to Tour the Lincoln Highway, Iowa City Press-Citizen, October 28, 2008

And here’s a teaser:

Bob Chase and Bernard "Buddy" Rosenbaum, in their 70s, are riding their Piaggio MP3 scooters across the country on the Lincoln Highway. They are blogging about their trip at:

www.noagelimitpiaggio.us

The local press has also been covering their trip:

• An American journey: Cross-country scooter trip makes stop in DeKalb, The Daily Chronicle (DeKalb, Ill.), July 4, 2008
• Maturing to the Piaggio MP3, Woodbine (Ia.) Twiner, July 9, 2008
• Septuagenarians scooter cross-country, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, July 10, 2008
• Pain at the Pump? Not a Problem for Times Square Bound Cross-Country Road Trippers, The Auto Channel, July 10, 2008

This year marks the centennial of a wealthy Pennsylvanian’s historic, cross-country automobile journey…. The family [of Jacob Murdock] managed to travel from its winter home in Pasadena, Calif., to New York City in a remarkably quick 32 days, 7 hours and 3 minutes.

• Trek put cars on map, Philadelphia Inquirer, July 7, 2008

A plaque in Oregon commemorates the Jefferson Davis Highway, which was announced just one year after the Lincoln Highway.

• Rock by the side of the road, The Mail Tribune (Medford, Ore.), July 6, 2008

A corn and bean salad recipe from the Lincoln Highway Cookbook, sold by the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor, is the perfect addition to a summer picnic.

• Salad is simple; just mix and dress, The Patriot-News (Harrisburg, Penna.), July 2, 2008

I’m happy to introduce a new format for the News and Events section: a weblog or “blog.” A blog is essentially a journal, with the entries typically listed in chronological order. Thanks to WordPress, we’ve gained some new features. On the right-hand side, you can browse through old entries by using the calendar, search the blog, or filter entries by category. You can also leave comments for each entry by clicking “Leave a comment” in the header of each entry.

Currently, I’m backfilling the blog with Russell Rein’s previous newsletters. I’m not quite done yet, so meanwhile, you can access them at

http://www.lincolnhighwayassoc.org/news_old/

Once I’ve finished the migration, this link will go away.

Enjoy the new News section!

John & Lenore Weiss have a new books out about a triangle road trip in Illinois covering Route 66, the Lincoln Highway and the Dixie Highway. More information is at their website:
http://www.il66authority.com/
Read a review at Route66News.com.

Michaels Wallis and Williamson’s new book on the Lincoln Highway, and their cross country book tour generated a lot of publicity this summer.

• IL LHA Director Kay Shelton has a web site about the book
• a review at the Route 66 News blog
• Checkout the tour blog with many photos
• From the Wall Street Journal
• From KCBS all news radio in San Francisco
• From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
• From LATimes.com
• From the New York Post’s Required Reading column
• From the Fort Wayne Observed blog with a video
• From the Deseret Morning News
• from the New York Times - The Virtues of Avoiding Interstates by Phil Patton
• From the HuntingtonNews.net
• Wallis also was featured on the Comedy Channel’s Colbert Report. You can watch the video here.
  [May require a highspeed web connection]

Lots of sites listed September 10, 1913 as the opening of the Lincoln Highway with inaccurate text such as, “1913 - The Lincoln Highway opened, becoming the first paved coast-to-coast highway in the United States. It is now known as U.S. 30″  Oh well……

The New York Times Archive 1851–1980 is now online, with many old articles scanned and accessible as PDF files. There are many articles on the Lincoln Highway starting with the 1912 Hoosier Tour. I created a search for the Lincoln Highway at the link below.

http://xrl.us/7cis

[You may need to create a free account at the NYT]

Kathleen Dow, of the Special Collection Library at the University of Michigan, which holds the archives of the original Lincoln Highway Association writes:

In addition to the completion of the Digital Image Archive, I also wanted to let you all know that I received a small grant (donated by a local businessman) to hire an archivist to re-process/re-house the papers of the Lincoln Highway Association.

As those of you who have used the 4 linear feet of correspondence, minutes, printed ephemera, and newsletters know, the papers definitely needed some attention. I’ve hired a UM grad student and she has started working on the archive; one of the first things she is doing is removing all of the acidic sheets of glassine that were interleaved between the documents. Not only will we end up with the papers more comfortably housed, but we will also have a finding aid or guide to the boxes. We will be able to mount this document on the web, which will be a great help to all of you conducting research. I will keep you posted as to the progress of the project.