Gregory M. Franzwa, a nationally known expert on the Lincoln Highway and founder of the current Lincoln Highway Association, will present a free slide lecture, “MUD: The Lincoln Highway in Ohio—1917-1927,” at 7 P.M. Tuesday, June 5, at the Canton Classic Car Museum, Market Avenue at Sixth Street NW, Canton, Ohio.
The talk is being sponsored by the museum.
Franzwa, editor of the LHA’s slick magazine, The Lincoln Highway Forum, has copied hundreds of snapshots of the nation’s first transcontinental highway from the scrapbooks of the original Lincoln Highway Association in Ann Arbor, Mich.—Ohio views will make up the bulk of his lecture.
The Tucson author is celebrating his firm’s republication of the book, A Complete Official Road Guide of the Lincoln Highway, Fifth Edition, originally published in 1924, and many of the slides depict scenes and maps of Ohio cities copied from the book.
“I like to show some of the ads in the book,” Franzwa said, “such as the new 1924 Dodge Brothers Business Sedan, the 1924 Columbia Six, and No-Leak-O Piston Rings. There will be ads for many of the businesses along the route. Canton was right on the Lincoln Highway, and many local people took off on the great road from there, heading east to Times Square in New York City or west to Lincoln Park, on the Pacific shore in San Francisco.”
A skilled lecturer of historic roads, Franzwa has performed in all the western states. This tour is his second in states east of the Mississippi. He has talked to packed houses in the West on his newest book, The Lincoln Highway: Utah, Vol. 4 of an ongoing series.
The old Lincoln Highway passed through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California. It crossed into Ohio at East Liverpool, and passed through Canton, Mansfield, Bucyrus, Beaverdam, and Lima before exiting the state west of Van Wert.
One advisory in the book states that the tourist can drive coast-to-coast in twenty to thirty days, traveling seven hours a day and averaging 18 miles per hour. “Don’t forget the colored goggles,” reads another, and “Don’t stop to cool motor at top of a hill, put car in gear and coast down to cool motor.”
“We have often heard the expression, ‘Getting there is half the fun,’” Franzwa said. “Well, ‘getting there’ in the 1920s, as the great highway was being converted from mud to gravel to brick, was ‘all the fun.’ To pull the shiny black Model T Ford out of the barn, crank it to life, and to head out of town on the newly graveled roads was a mesmerizing experience.
“Many opened the windshield to feel the cool country air in their faces as they traveled at 15 to 25 miles per hour. The sights of the green fields, the smells of newly cut hay, and yes, even the gasoline and oil vapors, all had a thrilling effect on motorists. They would go places just to be going—any place—it didn’t matter where.”
Franzwa said that the programs in Ohio would be especially meaningful to him. “Henry C. Ostermann, the field secretary of the Lincoln Highway Association, was from Ohio,” he said. “Each year his job required him to travel the highway from coast to coast, sometimes three times a summer. Many of the photographs in our presentation were taken by him. He died in Iowa in June 1920, when his Packard rolled over on him, and he is buried in the East Liverpool Cemetery.
“This program is important for another reason,” the author added. “The 2003 national conference of our Lincoln Highway Association will start the day after our program, just across the state line in Fort Wayne, Indiana.”
Interest in the Lincoln Highway is now being revived in the new Lincoln Highway Association—nearly 2,000 members are organized into chapters all along the road. They form into caravans to tour sections of the historic road. A coast-to-coast Classic Car Tour of the Lincoln from New York to California will take place in August. It has been organized by Bob Lichty, of the Canton Classic Car Museum.
The new paperback book is an accurate depiction of the original, including a full-color reproduction of the original brown leather cover. It sells for $22.95 and will be for sale after the presentation. The author will also have the first four volumes of his The Lincoln Highway series, giving the history of the road and mapping it through the states of Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Utah. The first three of those deluxe hardcover books sell for $34.95 each, and the Utah volume is priced at $39.95.
For book buyers who cannot attend the lecture, the publisher, The Patrice Press, maintains a toll-free number, 1/800/367-9242, for MasterCard or Visa orders. Shipping is $4.95 for the first volume and $1.50 for each additional book.