Devils Tower National Monument

Posted on September 16, 2024 by admin

Days are still fairly long in mid-August, so spending some time at Badlands NP before driving to Wyoming wasn’t a bad idea. As long as we got to our campsite with some light left, setting things up wouldn’t be difficult.

I’d checked the weather for our destination, Devils Tower National Monument, and the only time rain was expected was the late afternoon on August 19, exactly when we would arrive. Ah, well. Nothing to do about that but press on.

Skies were cloudy and the wind was up by the time we got to Wyoming.

The monument isn’t far from the border with South Dakota. Take I-90 to Sundance, then US 14 and then a short stretch of Wyoming 24 to the monument. Soon after we got off the Interstate, that ominous gray cut loose some fierce rain, so heavy at times that it was best to find a wide place in the road to stop and wait for it to pass. That happened more than once as the rain variously intensified and slacked off.

Even so, we got the the entrance to the monument – and the campground just outside the entrance – well before dark. No worries. Did it snow here while it was raining on us a few miles away?

No. That was hail. Some fairly big hailstones, too; not quite golf ball-sized, but not too far off the mark. We went in to register to find that the campground had lost its power.

“Storm knocked out your power?” I asked the clerk, a middle-aged woman. It had, she said, and done a lot of other damage, including to vehicles parked in the campground. She also explained that the places where tent campers go was probably covered by melting ice. She offered to do a refund for the day’s worth of camping we’d paid as a down payment on two days — as soon as the computers were up again.

And she did. Cell service was possible in the area, to my surprise, and I looked into a couple of motels in Sundance, about 20 or 30 minutes away. The Bear Lodge Motel had what we needed: two nights at a middling price. The motel was a comfortable independent with a fairly traditional streak when it came to motel décor and amenities, though (damn it) no bottle opener attached under the sink outside the bathroom and no Sanitized For Your Protection ribbon. Nice beds, though, and bathroom for that matter.

The next morning was clear and after a simple breakfast in the room, we returned to Devils Tower with the idea that we’d hike the trail that circles the tower. This time I had the leisure to document the approach to the monument.

Soon we discovered that the monument was closed. People from their cars and tour buses found out the very same thing.

I asked a NPS ranger at the entrance about it, and he said that a lot of trees and maybe rocks and other debris had fallen on the road inside the monument, and he didn’t know when it would open again – though he guessed not today, stressing that that wasn’t the official word. I thanked him and we figured, not today was about the size of it.

We wandered around a bit, taking a look at the thing. “Bear Lodge” is the translation of native names for the tower. The reference to the Devil was a Victorian-era creation (another of the four fonts of the modern world, and a particularly big one).

Impressive. If I understand what I read, scientific opinion isn’t quite solid on the exact process that caused the rising of the tower, but there it was: an igneous tower rising over sedimentary plains. Lording over the plains? There’s nothing that can’t be anthropomorphized.

Speaking of which, bipedal and stretched-body space aliens of a distinct green hue can be found in the main gift shop outside the entrance (not a NPS shop).

Remarkable, the ongoing influence (though admittedly minor) of a movie that came out nearly 50 years ago. Guess that shows the value of putting a catchy tune in your movie.

I hadn’t thought about that movie in years, much less seen it. In fact, I’ve seen it only once, as a new movie in late 1977, in those heady first months of having a drivers license, which meant I could take girls out. I did to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, though I’m not quite certain now which girl I took.

If you asked me, the gift shop had too much space alien bric-a-brac and not enough Teddy Roosevelt. His name is on the presidential proclamation creating the monument, the very first one under the Antiquities Act of 1906.

I sent a picture of the tower to my old friend Tom.

Tom responded with a text: *Hears the movie theme to Close Encounters*

Me: Looking at the gift shop, you’d think there was a permanent alien settlement on top.

Tom: *Looks around shiftily.* Isn’t there? Have you actually been up there to find out? They could have their own Starbucks up there for all we know.

Me: The truth is out there.

Tom: And it might be caffeinated!

Return to Le Roy, Home of Wausaneta

Posted on August 1, 2024 by admin

It so happens that Moraine View State Recreation Area is only a few miles north of Le Roy, Illinois, a burg I passed through more than five years ago. At that time I made the acquaintance of Wausaneta, an imaginary Kickapoo chief. His statue has stood in Kiwanis Park in Le Roy for more than a century now, gift to the town of the wealthy crackpot who dreamed him up. I mean, gift to the town of the spiritualist and leading citizen who communed with Wausaneta those many years ago.

As of Sunday, the statue of Wausaneta still stands in Le Roy’s main square.

I didn’t remember the carved stump tree nearby.

Panther Tree, it’s called. The local high school mascot is a panther. The reason I don’t remember it is because it wasn’t there until late 2019; I came in March of that year.

While Yuriko dozed in the car, I took a stroll down Main Street, learning that this isn’t the only Le Roy.

Most of the buildings are occupied by one business or another. The former Le Roy State Bank is now the Oak & Flame Bourbon Hall.

Every town worth its salt had an opera house, once upon a time. In this case, that time was 1892.

The Princess Theatre had an abandoned look, but its web site that says that Horizon: An American Saga is playing there once a day until August 3. Only $5 for seniors and children, and $6 for adults, which might be what it’s worth.

“Marcus West, son of Simeon West, built the Princess Theater in 1916,” the web site says. Simeon West was the aforementioned wealthy crackpot.

“Architect Arthur L. Pillsbury designed the brick theater with limestone accents. The first movie was Tennessee’s Pardner on November 21, 1916. The original theater was a silent movie house with piano accompaniment, as talkies did not make their debut in Le Roy until 1931. A grandson of Marcus West recounts that West’s daughter, while in high school, substituted as piano player when the regular player was unable to accompany the film.”

This building looked genuinely empty. Not only empty, but still sporting a Trump-Pence sign, already a relic of yore. It has a future as a hipster bar, maybe.

Guns & Glory.

Guns & Glory offers firearms, cleaning, repair, concealed carry classes, and Bibles.

“We are probably the only gun shop and religious book store combined that you will find,” its web site says. “We believe we can provide the two most important things to protect you – ‘God and guns.’ ”

Used to be the First National Bank. And a Rexall drug store.

Someone went to some lengths to blot out the Rexall name, but not enough to efface it completely, if you know what you’re looking at.

I believe the drug store in Alamo Heights where I bought comics in the early ’70s was a Rexall, but I’m not quite sure. At some moment after I left town, it disappeared. That same dynamic happened so much that the brand now enjoys only a whisper of its ’50s coast-to-coast retail glory.

The McLean County Museum of History

Posted on July 30, 2024 by admin

Revel in the obscurity: Details of posters advertising a regional brand of candy that hasn’t been made in years, created by a commercial artist no one has ever heard of, on display in a large town few people visit.

Bloomington-based Beich Candy Co. was the candy maker, and the posters advertise its Whiz Bar, whose slogan – until inflation made it obsolete – was “Whiz, best nickel candy there iz-z.”

The posters are behind glass at the McLean County Museum of History, and thus hard to photography in total without glare. But details work out nicely.

We visited the museum on Saturday morning.

“These posters were created by Don Shirley (1913-2001) for States Display, a local commercial art business,” notes the museum. “He was an artist and illustrator.”

A Prussian immigrant by the name of Paul F. Beich founded the candy company that carried his name. Beich Candy Co. lives on as a unit of Ferrero, with a candy factory in Bloomington (recently expanded), but Whiz seems to be no more. A chocolate-marshmallow-peanut confection, it sounds something like a Goo-Goo Cluster.

An even deeper dive into Beich Co. is at an Illinois Wesleyan University website. It’s the story of a food technologist who worked for the company, one Justin J. Alikonis.

“He designed and patented, among other things, a marshmallow-making machine, the ‘Whizolater,’ named after the Beich flagship candy bar, the Whiz,” the site says. “With no moving parts and operating solely on pressurized air, the Whizolater could make 1,400 gallons of marshmallow or nougat per hour.”

As local history museums go, McLean County is top drawer, with enough displays and artifacts to inspire all sorts of rabbit-hole expeditions, besides 20th-century candy making in central Illinois. Such as friends of Lincoln who otherwise would be lost to history.

He even looks a little like Lincoln, but maybe that’s just 19th-century styling.

Otherwise obscure incidents in McLean County history make their appearance as well, such as one in 1854, when a mob of Know-Nothings smashed 50 barrels each of brandy and cherry bounce, and 50 casks each of “high wine,” gin and whiskey taken from groggeries in Bloomington, according to the museum.

I had to look up cherry bounce. For those who like their neurotoxins sweet, I guess. The Know-Nothings were destroying the alcohol – “washed the prairie” with it, said a contemporary account, though perhaps some of it was squirreled away by thirsty Know-Nothings – presumably because it was associated with immigrant saloons.

A flag. For union and liberty.

A replica of the one carried by the 33rd Illinois Infantry Regiment, which has its start comprised of teachers and students and former students at Normal University (later ISU), with university president Charles E. Hovey as its colonel.

Most local history museums have oddities, and so does McLean County.

It’s a little hard to tell, but that’s a large chair. Though I’m six feet tall, my feet barely touched the ground. “Yes, please sit here!” its sign said. “The owners of Howard & Kirkpatrick’s Home Furnishings places this oversized chair outside their store to draw customers inside.”

The displays and artifacts are one thing, but what really makes the museum sing is its digs in the former courthouse.

Especially the former courtroom.

In which hangs a portrait of Vice President Adlai Stevenson.

The courthouse dates from the early 1900s, a time when officialdom at least believed that the physical structures of republican government ought to have a touch of grandeur.

Bloomington Ramble ’24

Posted on July 29, 2024 by admin

Want good soft serve ice cream in an unpretentious setting? Look no further than Carl’s Ice Cream, a plain-looking shop deep in the heart of Bloomington, Illinois. Also, look for its anthropomorphic soft serve cone rising over the parking lot.

Yuriko and Ann had strawberry, I had chocolate. Carl’s in Bloomington – there’s also one in Normal, with an ice cream muffler man outside – was an early afternoon stop on Saturday. We spent part, but not all of the weekend, in Bloomington.

Something we (I) also had time to do was take a better look at the impressive three-legged communications tower in downtown Bloomington. It’s visible for quite a distance, and makes me wonder, why aren’t more communication towers this interesting?

Much of the day was hot, or at least very warm, and sunny, a prelude to heavy rains early Sunday morning. So Yuriko was content to stay in the car – with the AC running – when I took in a few closer views of tower.

Pantagraph articles about the tower are paywalled, but snippets poke through from search engine results:

In the last 30 years of telephone, radio and other network service, the Tower Center became a sort of landmark for downtown Bloomington, lovingly nicknamed the city’s “Eiffel Tower.”

Bloomington’s ‘Eiffel Tower’ changes hands after 30 years

The McLean County Center for Human Services Recovery Program is gaining a new home beneath the iconic 420-foot communications tower in Bloomington…

Another source tells me that the tower dates from 1989. The Tower Center is the two-story building under the tower, now belonging to McLean County.

After the rain cleared away, late Sunday morning was as toasty as Saturday had been, but more humid. I decided against a walkabout at the Park Hill Cemetery in Bloomington. It’s good to ration your time under those hot and copper skies.

Still, we drove around a bit through the cemetery. Not a lot of memorial variety, but not bad.

Now I can say I’ve seen Mike Ehrmantraut’s grave. But not that Mike Ehrmantraut, of course. The fellow offed by Walter White, being fictional, must have an equally fictional grave.

Adjacent the cemetery is the sizable Miller Park, which includes the Miller Park Zoo. We didn’t want to use our ration of intense sunlight at a zoo either, but in the park itself.

When you see a steam locomotive in park (and its tender), you really ought to get out and look.

Three million miles. So the train could have, with the right track, gone to the Moon and back a number of times, provided it took its own oxygen to keep that engine going.

And what would the display be without a caboose? Partly because that’s just a fun word to say.

Ignorant fellow that I am, I didn’t know the Nickel Plate Road, so I looked it up later. Once upon a time, it was a major regional RR, spanning northern Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.

Miller Park features a sizable war memorial.

In its vicinity are some retired weapons of war, such as a captured German 210 mm Krupp Howitzer (in better shape than this one).

As well as a WWI tank. Created for that conflict, at least. An M1917 light tank. Apparently none made it to the front during the war, but were put in service for a few years after the war by the U.S. Army.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one of those on display. I’m reminded of my great-uncle Ralph. I understand — from my mother, and maybe even grandma told me this — that he was in a tank corps in France, with the American Expeditionary Forces. Such a posting is said to be fairly dangerous, and I believe it. Supposedly, Ralph was poised to go to the front at the time of the Armistice, which might well have saved him.

Letters, 1969

Posted on July 28, 2024 by admin

The great volume of paper letters from my mother to me didn’t begin until I went away to VU, but there were a few before that, such as when I visited my aunt and uncle and cousin around the time of a certain historic event 55 years ago now.

Considering how old it is, the letter is in pretty good shape. Only slightly yellowed.

I believe Sue and Ken and Ralph had come to visit us in San Antonio in mid-July, and I went back with them for a visit to their home in Ardmore, Oklahoma, that happened to coincide with Apollo 11 landing on the Moon.

I’m positive we were driving to Ardmore on the 20th, because I remember hearing about the impending landing on the radio, and a discussion in the car about whether it would happen by the time we got to their house. I might have been eight, but I knew what was going on. I had watched the launch and was following the mission closely. As it happened, “Tranquility Base here, the Eagle as landed” moment was not long after we arrived at their house.

Moon walk or no, life on Earth goes on. My mother wrote another letter on July 27.

My mother said they were coming to pick me up on the 31st, as I’m sure happened. From there we took a driving loop around the South – from Oklahoma through Arkansas and Tennessee, reaching the northwest corner of Georgia before turning back and heading through Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana before returning to Texas.

The Great Southern Loop, I called it retroactively. Maybe 20 years later. Or the Great Southern Loop of ’69 even later, to differentiate it from the Southern Solo Loop of ’09 or the more recent ones of ’19 and ‘21. It’s hard to keep track sometimes.

He May Ride Forever ‘neath the Streets of Boston

Posted on June 24, 2024 by admin

Something I never thought of until today: you can buy booklets to hold fortune cookie fortunes. One at Amazon promises 10 pages that hold 40 fortunes, for $12.99. That came to mind, or rather set me looking, when I happened across another fortune I saved:

Magic time is creale when an unconventional person comes to stay.

I supposed “created” was meant, but in any case that sounds like the pitch for a sitcom episode.

I’m not buying a fortune holder. Those little slips will be tucked away with my business card accumulation: five holders so far, holding some hundred number of cards. Many are restaurant cards, some dating back to the ’80s. Others include a sampling of hotels, museums, shops, even a few churches.

Also, transit cards. I got a kick out of this one.

I used it during my most recent visit to Boston in 2018. Previously the system used metal tokens, but of course those are gone. CharlieTickets and CharlieCards were introduced in 2006.

Charlie was the sad-sack (and poor) protagonist of the song “M.T.A.,” which I know well. That is, the Kingston Trio’s 1959 recording, but not so much about its background. So naturally I had to look into it.

“The text of the song was written in 1949 by Jacqueline Steiner and Bess Lomax Hawes,” writes Jonathan Reed, once a student at MIT. “It was one of seven songs written for [Walter] O’Brien’s campaign, each one emphasized a key point of his platform. [He was running for mayor of Boston that year.]

“One recording was made of each song, and they were broadcast from a sound truck that drove around the streets of Boston. This earned O’Brien a $10 fine for disturbing the peace.”

The Kingston Trio got ahold of it a decade later and it sounds like they had fun with it. Clearly the song endures locally, enough to receive a sort of official recognition by the modern MBTA.

The Pearl Incident

Posted on June 19, 2024 by admin

The run of 90° F. (or so) days will run a little bit longer, see below, but as usual for summer in this part of the world, that kind of streak won’t have the staying power you see in certain other summertime places I’m familiar with, where 100° F. days line up in a seemingly endless array.

A site that sends me email sent a link to a Juneteenth article today with the slightly annoying headline: “5 Black History Landmarks in the U.S. You’ve Probably Never Heard Of.”

At least the publication included “probably.” But I checked, and I’d heard of four of them. Mostly they were not great unknowns. The Ebenezer Baptist Church was on the list, for instance. C’mon.

Still, I will give them their due by informing me of an event I hadn’t heard of: The Pearl Incident, which involved the unsuccessful escape attempt in 1848 by 77 slaves sailing from Washington City on a schooner called The Pearl. There is a plaque noting that fact “in the bricks of Wharf Street,” according to Wharf Life DC. If I’m ever in the Wharf district in DC, I will look for it.

Eclipse Leftovers

Posted on May 9, 2024 by admin

Time for a second spring break. It isn’t really spring unless you can squeeze in two. Back to posting around May 19.

Today didn’t much feel like spring, anyway. Cold drizzle. Not that cold, really, but it felt that way after a run of warm days.

I’ve read about people who become eclipse followers. There’s a word for it, at least according to Time: umbraphile. (Time is still a thing?) It’s an impulse I appreciate, but I don’t know that I’ll join them.

On the other hand, Pamplona (say) on August 12, 2026 sounds good in all sorts of ways, so we shall see. I’m not counting on being unshuffled when it comes to this mortal coil on August 12, 2045, which is the timing of the next North American total solar eclipse.

Last month, we passed through Farmington, Missouri, which is the seat of St. Francois County.

The courthouse, fourth on the site, dates from the 1920s. “Innuendoes about fraud led to a grand jury investigation; the solution to the architect’s questionable procedure apparently was resolved by closer supervision,” says the University of Missouri about Norman Howard of St. Louis, the architect of the current courthouse.

There’s a story in that line, the details of which may be lost to time.

Who can you see outside an antique store on the main street of Potosi, Missouri? Betty!

Who can you see on the wall of the Laura Ingills Wilder Home in southern Missouri?

A young Rose Wilder Lane, Laura’s daughter and a writer herself, and apparently a foremother of modern libertarianism.

Spotted in downtown Nacogdoches.

That’s a nicely designed memorial plaque. Showing the nine flags over Nacogdoches; the usual six in Texas lore, plus three more localized ones raised during various rebellions.

Did I make note of the landmarked building? It was nice enough, but not memorable. Lone Star Feeds, on the other hand —

A pet food plant, about 50 years old now.

For sale in Logansport, Louisiana.

“Vintage oil tank,” yours for $200, as of April.

One of the murals I saw in Shreveport was prominently signed.

Your tax dollars at work: funding by the National Endowment for the Arts. Actually, that strikes me as a good way to spend a minuscule amount of federal dollars.

A redevelopment opportunity in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

That would take some serious coin, but maybe it could work. Step one, hire that structural engineer to do a report.

If you have the urge for barbecue in Hot Springs, this place will satisfy. Cookin Q since ’52.

The sort of place with license plates on the wall.

All that is window dressing. The ‘cue is the thing, and Stubby’s has lasted so long for a reason.

On the side of the road on highway Arkansas 7, part of a wayside park.

The plaque reads:

Dedicated to the workers of the Arkansas Farmers Union Green Thumb whose efforts made this park possible so that others might enjoy the beauty of the state of Arkansas. January 1966 to December 1969. Lewis Johnson, Jr. State Director.

Green Thumb?

“Green Thumb was the first nonprofit organization to run a jobs program for disadvantaged rural Americans in response to the War on Poverty,” the union says, beginning in 1966, employing low-income rural residents to build things, something like the WPA or the CCC did. By the ’80s, Green Thumb had vanished.

At Uranus, Missouri, off I-44, Yuriko was driving and I happened to have my phone handy. We were too tired to stop.

I’d driven by Uranus a few times, but not stopped. Something like the Snake Farm on I-35 between Austin and San Antonio. Clearly, I need to visit sometime. Uranus, that is. Maybe the Snake Farm, too.

“Beyond the appeal of what [Uranus owner Louie Keen] insisted was very good fudge, Uranus enticed travelers as a kind of dysfunctional, self-contained utopia, like South of the Border and Da Yoopers,” Roadside America says.

“Uranus, said Louie, was the kind of place tourists want to find on a road trip, with life-size dinosaurs, cheesy photo-ops, ridiculous souvenirs, two-headed freaks, the World’s Largest Belt Buckle, and various shops and attractions such as a hatchet-hurling venue named The Uranus Axehole.”

Standard Oil Gas Station, Odell

Posted on May 5, 2024 by admin

One place to stop between greater Chicago and Normal, Illinois, is the town of Odell. I bet not too many people do, but those that do come for a look at the former Standard Oil gas station that once served motorists on the former U.S. 66.

That’s what we did today. The main purpose of the drive was to fetch Ann and some of her belongings from Normal, where she has completed her junior year. I figured a few minutes in Odell (pop. 1,000) — which is between Dwight and Pontiac — wouldn’t be wasted. The gas station counts as a link in the tourist chain that is Route 66, though still fairly obscure even in the grand scheme of that creation. So much the better.

“In 1932, a contractor, Patrick O’Donnell, purchased a small parcel of land along Route 66 in Odell, Illinois,” the NPS says. “There he built a gas station based on a 1916 Standard Oil of Ohio design, commonly known as a domestic style gas station. This ‘house with canopy’ style of gas station gave customers a comfortable feeling they could associate with home.” (And not Big Oil.)

Later other brands of gas were sold there, and eventually – after U.S. 66 was no more – the building became an auto repair shop and then abandoned. A typical arc for such businesses, in other words. The village of Odell acquired the station around the turn of the 21st century to make it into a tourist attraction. We were duly attracted.

More of a stabilization than a restoration, looks like, at least inside the former garage space, with odds and ends here and there, and souvenirs for sale.

The gas station is one thing, but I couldn’t leave town without taking a look at the Odell water tower.

Started as a town along a railroad, as so many others did, and named after a shadowy figure named William Odell, one of the original owners of the land in the 1850s. Apparently he didn’t stay long, selling his interest but leaving his name.

Hot Springs National Park ’24

Posted on April 30, 2024 by admin

We arrived at Quapaw Baths in Hot Springs National Park on April 14 in time for a late-afternoon soak.

Or rather, a series of soaks in its indoor pools, which are heated at various temperatures. I might have skipped it, but Yuriko is keen on hot soaks, having come of age in Japan, where they take their hot springs seriously. The bathhouse has been well well restored, considering its former decrepitude.

Good to see Bathhouse Row again after so many years. All together, eight bathhouse structures line Central Avenue in the town of Hot Springs, and are part of the national park; two offer baths. In 2007, because the Quapaw was still unrestored, only one did, so we took the waters at the Buckstaff, which was a more formalized experience than at the Quapaw.

The Lamar.

“[The Lamar] opened on April 16, 1923 replacing a wooden Victorian structure named in honor of the former U. S. Supreme Court Justice Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar,” says the NPS, a fact that amuses me greatly, for idiosyncratic reasons. Mostly it’s NPS offices and other space these days, but I bought some postcards and a refrigerator magnet in its NP gift shop.

The Maurice.

And of course, The Fordyce, now the park’s visitors center and a free museum highlighting its bathhouse amenities. Named for its founder, Samuel Fordyce, one of those roaringly successful business men that the late 19th century unleashed.

“He was a major force behind the transformation of Hot Springs (Garland County) from a small village to major health resort,” the Encyclopedia of Arkansas says. “The town of Fordyce (Dallas County) is named for him, as is the Fordyce Bath House in Hot Springs.

“He enjoyed friendships with Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, and William McKinley, all of whom asked his advice on matters concerning appointments and regional issues.” Ah, there’s the trip’s presidential site, however tenuous.

As for the building, it was “designed by Little Rock architects Mann and Stern and constructed under the supervision of owner Sam Fordyce’s son John, [and] the building eventually cost over $212,000 to build, equip, and furnish.” That’s 212 grand in fat 1910s dollars, or $6.5 million in present value.

I believe I took somewhat better pictures this time around. Maybe.

Directly over Hernando de Soto and the maiden is the Fordyce’s famed stained glass aquatic-fantasy skylight.

Not the only stained glass around.

The Fordyce is an expansive place, and in fact, the largest of the bathhouses, according to the NPS.

Mustn’t forget the spring that made it all possible, whose presence is noted in the basement.

Bathhouse Row is at the base of a steep slope. Climb some outdoor stairs and soon you’re at the Hot Springs Grand Promenade behind and above the row. Not many people were out promenading. True, by the time we got there, it was the morning of April 15, a Monday. Still, people were missing out on one pleasant walk.

The bricked trail was an early project (1933) of the lesser-known but no less remarkable Public Works Administration.

“Unlike the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration, the PWA was not devoted to the direct hiring of the unemployed,” the Living New Deal says. “Instead, it administered loans and grants to state and local governments, which then hired private contractors to do the work.

“Some prominent PWA-funded projects are New York’s Triborough Bridge, Grand Coulee Dam, the San Francisco Mint, Reagan National Airport (formerly Washington National), and Key West’s Overseas Highway.”

Further up the hill is the abandoned Army Navy Hospital, whose therapeutic heyday was WWII.

The promenade passes by some of Hot Springs’ hot springs.

The path also offers views of the back of some of the bathhouses, including the wonderful Quapaw dome.

The crowning bit (literally) on a marvelous piece of work.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: US History