One of the dreams my parents had was to travel to Alaska and take the Alaskan Highway. It was something they managed to do before my mother passed away. They traveled from Dawson City, Yukon Territory and all the way to Fairbanks, stopping along the way and seeing as many sights as they could. They would travel with the help of a book called The Milepost, published by Alaska Magazine, showing something to see along every mile of the highway.
At one point, they made an effort to drive along Historic Route 66 and see the remnants of what is left of The Mother Road, where abandoned hotels and deserted gas stations are a stark reminder of the glory days of travel before the interstate highways crisscrossed the landscape.
Texas has a similar publication titled Why Stop? that explains what is on the historic markers across the state, allowing you to "experience" the history without having to stop. New Hampshire has a booklet explaining the history behind every one of their covered bridges, so you can read the corresponding entry about the numbered bridges (again, without having to stop).
When I was a child, traveling was as much about the road trip as it was the destination.
These days, people look at a map, choose a place, make reservations at a hotel on a specified day, pack a suitcase or three and head out….to the airport, where they fly to the destination, rent a car and zoom off to the specified hotel.
Seems like a shame, too, because there is so much along the way that is missed. Like the desert I discovered in New Hampshire (Yes, you read that right), or the statue of Paul Bunyon and Babe the Blue Ox I saw in Minnesota, or the world’s largest chair I discovered outside a furniture factory in Massachusetts, or the church beside a reservoir in Massachusetts, a stark reminder of a town that got drowned to provide water for the ever-expanding suburbs of Boston. Or how about the world’s largest ball of yarn in Iowa, or the world's largest potato in Idaho, or the Cadillac Ranch in Texas, now located along Interstate 40 just outside Amarillo, where Cadillacs are buried in the dirt, once a stopping place for tourists along Route 66. There is also the "flavor graveyard " at Ben & Jerry's in Waterbury, Vermont, granite quarries in New Hampshire and hills of marble in Vermont. Not to mention a chocolate infused ride through the Hershey Factory in Pennsylvania and a library that straddles the border between Vermont and Quebec.
There are alligator farms in South Dakota, lighthouses along the coast of Maine, old sawmills in Virginia, log cabins in Kentucky, museums of all shapes and sizes and battlefields and forts dating to the Revolutionary and Civil War. There are Native mounds in Missouri, rivers carrying gold in North Carolina and remnants of old Spanish settlements in Florida. One just has to take the time to look, get off the highway and actually stop, which is partly the point in taking a road trip.
Changing cultures and changing habits.
When I lived and worked in Massachusetts I would get in the car and drive. I saw interesting sights in New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Rhode Island and Cape Cod just by looking at the blue signs indicating some tourist spot or museum. And, since Vermont has no billboards, those blue signs are sights in and of themselves. I saw whaling museums, houses that once belonged to literary giants and poets, lobster boats at sea, pilgrim memorials, places that inspired the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne and studios where Norman Rockwell lived and worked. I saw a backyard winery in Vermont, where a local couple bottled apple wine infused with maple syrup (It was Vermont, after all).
These days, children grow up without all those wonderful experiences. They set their sights on Disney World, or Niagara Falls, or Washington, D.C., where, even then, they see only about one third of the wonders to behold. I believe they are missing out on a whole lot of wonderful experiences along the way, seeing much of America from above. Granted, in the tourist town I live in, you still see out of state plates from places as far flung as Maine and Saskatchewan. But how many places did they actually see along the way to get from there to here?
I have a friend who scheduled to the hour where he would stop for gas, where he would eat and where he would stay on his journey from San Antonio to Yosemite, leaving little time in his schedule for a flat tire, much less pulling off the road to see something unique.
I am the kind of person who stops for every landmark and interpretative marker along the highway. Many have disappeared. The stuff that matters to me about those stops remains etched in my memory to this day.
Road tripping is an adventure and, although fun to do alone, it is always more interesting if you can take along someone with a chaotic mixture of different viewpoints and different interests. That always helps expand our world just a little bit more. One should always stop and see what lies along the roadside. That is how I discovered nearly forgotten hot springs just outside Las Vegas, New Mexico.
One favorite stop along the highway as we traveled when I was a child was Nickerson Farms, a mainstay of the Interstate Highway system. It was a gas station, restaurant and travel store all in one and each one featured regional gifts. They also had live bees behind glass which you could watch as they made honey. It was started in the 1960s by I. J. Nickerson, a former Stuckey's franchisee who did not agree with that chain's rules and regulations. Nickerson Farms had as many as 60 restaurants in the Midwest. The chain went bankrupt in the 1980s and all the locations were shuttered.
Another chain we frequently stopped at along those journeys was Stuckey's, known for its pecan log rolls and regional souvenirs. It, however, survived and even has an online gift shop. Headquartered in Eastman, Georgia, the company purchased a pecan processing and candy making plant in Wrens, Georgia. The current CEO of Stuckey's is Stephanie Stuckey, granddaughter of the brand's founder W.S. Stuckey Sr., who began buying pecans in the 1930s, which he would sell at a roadside stand in 1937, along with sugar cane juice, syrup, homemade quilts, and cherry cider. The company grew to 368 stores after World War II and was sold to Pet, Inc. in the early 1960s.
W.S. Stuckey Sr. died in 1977, the same year that Illinois Central Industries bought Pet Milk Co. and began to close Stuckey’s stores across the country. Eventually, only 75 stores remained.
In 1984, W.S. “Billy” Stuckey, Jr., son of the founder, repurchased Stuckey’s and began to turn the company around. Billy had a new idea for the company - Stuckey’s Express, a store-within-a-store concept that resulted in over 165 licensed Stuckey’s Express stores in 17 states.
In 2019, W.S. Stuckey Sr.’s granddaughter, Ethel “Stephanie” Stuckey took her life’s savings and bought the company from her father.
Today, Stuckey’s has 65 licensed locations, a distribution center based in Eastman, a pecan and candy plant to make their own Stuckey’s products, an active online business, and some 200 retailers that sell Stuckey’s pecan snacks and candies in over 5,000 outlets.
One place that was a must see along the highway is still in existence and even has its name on mile signs across New Mexico. We always made a stop on our way from the East Coast to the West Coast along Interstate 40 to visit family.
Somewhere in the whoosh of the past 90 years, Clines Corners lost its apostrophe - but not its convenience, chutzpah or even sense of style.
It is a place where people can gas up their vehicles, get a bite to eat, use the (remarkably clean and spacious) restrooms and buy saltwater taffy on their way out the door. Or salsa, or a pair of socks with an image of Sasquatch on them.
Welcome to Clines Corners, once called Cline’s Corners, located where Interstate 40 meets U.S. 285 - and where John Wayne, Snoopy and extraterrestrials all seem like natives of the Land of Enchantment as they pop up on trinkets, magnets, ornaments and pajamas at the combination truck stop/gas station/gift store/Route 66 landmark.
This venerable roadside attraction, heralded by signs on nearby highways proclaiming, “Worth Stopping for Since 1934,” is turning 90 this year, although no paperwork exists stating exactly when in 1934 Roy “Pops” Cline opened the nearly 40,000 square foot business.
The legend of Route 66 pervades the atmosphere.
Clines Corners is not just a kitschy carnival, according to a Route 66 historian. It is a unique holdover to a bygone day that has evolved over the years. At your first look it is just a modern truck stop/convenience store, but if you look into its roots, you will see that they go much deeper.
Once just a gas station and cafe in the Depression era, the truck stop has remained relevant by offering more than just gas pumps and eats. Having its own exit off Interstate 40 - with lots of road signage nearby to remind people it is still there - has helped it survive.
Clines Corners has an almost museum-like feel to it, and thus serves as a living time capsule, a bridge between the past, present and even the future for Route 66 historians and enthusiasts.
The original Cline’s Corners - with the apostrophe - actually was located several miles south from where it is now, where what they called old Highway 6 intersected with old Highway 2. At that point, Highway 6 was little more than a dirt road bulldozed across the state’s beltline. Through Tijeras Canyon, it looked more like a cow path.
Though the original Route 66 was laid out in New Mexico in the late 1920s, it was realigned in 1937 - the year “Pops” Cline moved his operation up the road to be where all the action was.
There, luck smiled on Cline. When a political tussle in Santa Fe resulted in a complete realignment of Route 66 straight through his acreage, Pops hit the goldmine. He built a neat white box of a store emblazoned with his name: Cline’s. He served 15-cent bowls of chile that drew people from miles away. And he made more profit fixing flats than filling tanks, roads being what they were.
Cline sold the business in 1939 to a couple of state policemen and hauled the family to Kingman, Arizona, where he opened a similar enterprise near Hoover Dam.
There was once a 1950s entrance to Clines Corners showcasing the seal of New Mexico that was made out of silverware.
There was a gift shop at the combination diner/gas station in those days, but not as extensive as what is there now.
What has kept Clines Corners going are two main things: Interstate 40 and U.S. 285.
These days, about 600,000 people visit at the center every year. Clines Corners even has its own ZIP code - 87070.
Maybe it is time to bring back the nostalgia of the great American road trip.
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