A Blog Along The Lincoln Highway

It’s about 75 miles on that Loneliest Road, Route 50, from Ely to the town of Eureka, Nevada. There’s some awesome high desert beauty between the two towns, but not a whole lot more. The town was supposedly named for the victory cry of one of the earliest miners in the area. Eureka!

In the car, I annoy Bob and Jarrett by reading aloud some of the Eureka material that I have in our box of books. All the writers mention that Eureka was known in its heyday in the late nineteenth century as “The Pittsburgh of The West.” It was a mining town. A big success. With filthy air from some 16 smelters operating full time during the “furious boom of the 1880s.” Scads of money were made off of some 50 mines nearby where there was a lot of lead, some silver, gold and even zinc. As we drove into town, there was a familiar looking pile of slag on the right side of the road. We felt at home. We Pittsburghers know slag piles. The one at the east end of Eureka was blacker than most around Pittsburgh, but they weren’t making steel here, they were trying to get impurities out of ore. There was lots of lead mixed in with the silver. Both minerals proved to be valuable. The nineteenth cemtury skies darkened with smoke. And this slag was the leftover waste that no one wanted. Pile it up.

“Let’s just drive through and take a look,” I say. Jarrett goes slowly, and we all check things out and then pull into a parking lot at the west end of town.

“There are at least five things I want to shoot,” says Bob.
“Let’s go all the way back through,” I suggest. “I want to go in the General Store way at the other end of town. See what’s going on there.”
Bob says, “Yes, I love their sign.”

While I go in to see what’s going on in the classic looking General Store And Mini Mart, Bob and Jarrrett start looking for “frames.” We’re working fast because it looks and smells like rain. The sky is threatening, darkened by rain clouds not smelting.

In the store, I meet Tony Rowley (prounounced Ro-lee, like Roly poly) and his mother Leona. She runs the store and has been doing that for over 30 years. “She’s famous for her coffee,” says Tony. “And she knows some of the history of this great little town.”

Tony is an unofficial one-man Chamber of Commerce. He loves Eureka. “It’s the best place to live in America.”
“Well, is it lonely?” I ask. “You are on the Loneliest Road in America.”
“No, we’re not lonely,” he says. “That’s silly. People are moving here. Mining may start again soon. Things are going well.”
I explain what brings us to town and ask Tony if he’ll do an on-camera interview with us.
“Sure,” he says.
“Let me get the guys,” I say.

We interview Tony outside the store. He’s great. Then we get some shots of him with his mother inside. After she puts on a pot of coffee (“I always use Farmers Blend Coffee,” she says in mock-TV-commercial style,) we interview her across the counter. She sells a lot of bananas, she says. And apparently the long wooden table on the left side of the store is a community gathering spot, especially in the morning. “I sell a lot of coffee.”

There are bags of grain, newspaper clippings, candy bars, used paperbacks piled up on shelves along the opposite wall, all kinds of stuff. And a mounted deer head on the back wall. “Guess who shot that?” says Tony. “You?” I ask. “No, she did,” he says, poimting at his mother. “When was that? Twenty years ago?”
“About that,” she concurs.

We talk about the store, the town (“You can’t leave without visiting the Opera House, the Court House and the Museum,” Leona tells us,) and the Lincoln Highway. I think they prefer thinking of the road as the Lincoln rather than the Loneliest. And soon we’re talking about various old routes, so I go out to the van and get the Butko book to show some of the maps he has marked in there. “Are you going to leave me this book?” asks Leona with a smile.
“No, ma’am,” says Bob. “We need that. That’s our Bible. We wouldn’t know where we are if we didn’t have that book.”

Before long, we meet two of Tony’s brothers, one a real brother and the other an honorary, but everyone’s trying to help. We ask where we should go for lunch, and there seems to be no agreement. One says the Owl is good, another recommends the Chinese at the Eureka Cafe and someone else says the diner just across the street has good take-out. It’s drizzling and it’s getting late, so we decide to eat lunch before getting more shots. We end up at the Eureka Cafe where the young Chinese waitress speaks very little English. She takes the orders and then she cooks them. Jarrett’s hope for chicken and broccoli gets all mixed up, but Bob and I are happy with our lo mein and fried rice.

After lunch, Bob and Jarrett (holding an umbrella over the camera) get shots of all the things that Leona told us we had to see. I also follow orders and go in the Courthouse to see some of the old photos on display there. The town’s history is incredibly well documented in beautiful black and white photographs. I find out that the pictures are all stored at the Eureka Sentinel Museum just across the street, and I head up there. The historian/manager/curator there, Ms. Ree Taylor, offers to help me with history and photos and anything else I might need if we decide to put together a story about Eureka. That seems likely. It’s a charming place, and the people are truly friendly.

4:30 PM The road ahead demands our attention, but we love to dawdle, to check out one more thing, like the unusual Lincoln Highway marker on the corner by the courthouse. It says this is the General Motors Section of the Lincoln Highway. Hmm. As usual, we spend too much time in Eureka.

5:45 PM We wind our way down through the hills, riding the twisting and turning part of Route 50 through the little town of Austin, NV, which obviously holds many more interesting little businesses, some handsome churches, lots of old stone structures and several unusual motels. One story after another. We would like to have time to check out all these towns along 50, but we really want to be in Reno tonight.

The road straightens out again, and we’re sailing at 75 mph across another stretch of Nevada desert. This one has some rolling hills covered in sagebrush. There’s some sort of flowering plant that seems to be concentrated along the sides of the road that’s blooming bright yellow right now.

The road is long and straight and empty again.

6:50 PM Jarrett says we’re on the longest straightest stretch of highway yet. It’s still Route 50, the loneliest road, and I’ll have to say that we’ve seen few other cars. The sun is getting low in the sky, filling the car with intense bright light. If I knew where my sunglasses were, I’d put them on.

Jarrett has been driving all day. I think that’s a first. Usually we switch off more often, but he says he feels fine and he does seem to enjoy the task. Bob shoots often out the side window at this hour because the setting sun makes shooting forward through the windshield too difficult. The head-on sunlight as we drive westward shows every smear, wipe, fleck of dust, bug-squash and whatever else has collected on the windshield.
I’m typing on my laptop in the back seat, trying to watch the changing landscape too.

7:30 PM We’re coming into the town of Fallon, and Bob is itching to stop for a tripod shot now in the golden light while we’re still on the loneliest road. We haven’t stopped since we left Eureka. But the road doesn’t seem lonely at all here. It’s a thriving town.

When you’re on those empty, stark stretches of solitary highway and desert, you think there’s no civilization anywhere, but then you drive into a town like Fallon with all the fast food chains, muffler joints, big box stores and it’s always a disappointment. You would have to weed through the forest of franchises to get to anything really interesting, local and/or tasty. Give us the sporadic and historic small towns. We go on.

Several miles later we stop in the wee town of Hazen for gas and a pee at the Hazen Market, an old canopy gas station. Jarrett’s middle name is “Hazen” so he’s happy to be stopping here in such a well named Nevada town, and this independent station’s a wonderful old place, undoubtedly another story we could pursue if we had 4 or 5 more days.

We all get out and wander around, fill the tank

I talk with the woman inside, attractive and pleasant. She seems to be the right age to maybe have been a hippie, maybe went to Woodstock or Altamont, maybe lived on a commune, or maybe I’m totally wrong. She knows some stuff about the Lincoln Highway. “That’s not the original Lincoln you’re traveling on,” she says. “There’s a guy who lives not far away and he’s taught me about it. The original is on the other side of the building. The remains of a concrete roadway are still there, overgrown, but you can see how the road used to go.”

She also tells me this Hazen Market once housed the Hazen post office, pointing out the outline on the ceiling of the old post office walls. Now this business is part convenience store, part gas station, part souvenir stand, serving the unpredictable mix of functions that an independent “market” can. When I go to the restroom, I have to take a picture. It’s the first gas-station restroom I’ve ever been in that has a bathtub.

When we get in the van and hit the highway again, Bob is chuckling.
“What’s so funny?” I ask.
“Jarrett was talking to those two guys,” says Bob.
There had been two young guys hanging out at the Hazen Market.
“And Jarrett pointed to the sign, and said, ‘That’s my middle name.’ And the one guy said, “What? Hazen or Market?’”

We drive into the sunset, heading for Reno.

It’s already dark when we get to the outskirts of Reno and try to find the old Lincoln Highway route into town.

Thanks to a brusk Asian cop in a gas station, we get onto Prater Way, turn left, and after a while, it becomes Fourth Street in Reno. For a while, we start to see high-rise casinos off to our left, and we appear to be heading in a wrong direction, but then Fourth Street swings around, and soon we’re in the midst of dancing neon and high stakes rollers, competing casinos, and the famous arch over Virginia Street proclaiming this “The Biggest Little City In The World.”

We shoot everything. I’m driving. Bob and Jarrett are hanging out the windows, all cameras blazing away! We sing a little Johnny Cash. This Reno is certainly lively looking, more Vegas-y than Ely-esque.

We find rooms in a medium-sized casino called the Sienna near where an older RENO arch has been re-created or re-installed or something. It’s tasteful and reserved compared to the main one today.

After we get the equipment to the rooms, we go in search of dinner. A nearby, interesting looking Italian place is already closed. It’s 10:05 pm. We walk toward Harrah’s, one of the big casinos, pausing on the sidewalk long enough for me to adlib a quick “stand-up” for Jarrett to shoot and use on one of his video postcards for this blog. Watch it.

Then we find an open eatery in Harrah’s.

Bob and Jarrett both have halibut and I take the Ukrainian waitress’s suggestion and try something Chinese. They fare better than I.

By the end of my lo mein, I’m zonked. No blackjack for me tonight. Bob says he may take a walk.

We agree to meet for breakfast at 8 am, as usual. At the casino’s coffee shop.

Bob and I meet for breakfast at the casino’s coffee shop. Jarrett is editing the video clip we worked on last night, so he stays in his room and misses the granola-yogurt- fresh-fruit bar that he would truly appreciate. It was a Jarrett-friendly breakfast.

We all want to be ready for this day. California, here we come. We load up and start out of Reno, getting back on Interstate 80 just west of town, and we don’t get on a two-lane till we take the exit to Truckee, California, where the beautiful Donner Lake has made this a tourist destination, a rustic mountain resort and vacation town. Everywhere we look, there were interesting little cabins and businesses, places where there are undoubtedly great people with good stories. We don’t pause. We keep driving.

We follow Route 40 up into the Sierra Nevada mountain peaks toward Donner Pass. The pass and the lake and the state park and lots of other places around here are named for the ill-fated Donner Party of emigrants heading west to California in 1846. They got trapped around here by very severe winter storms, and there are tales that some of Donner party folks resorted to cannibalism to survive. Good stories that still give us shivers.

As you head up to the Donner Pass you can see evidence of all the various sorts of travelling that have used this pathway. Native Americans passed through here first, then pioneers in the nineteenth century, followed shortly thereafter by the railroad which did some monumental constructions including snowsheds over tracks so that the winters wouldn’t stop the trains. You can still see some of the original road that was the winding path of the 1913 Lincoln Highway, and you still drive across a beautiful 1926 concrete arch viaduct called the Donner Summit Bridge as you take Route 40 up.

We stop and get many shots of the bridge although it’s raining, it’s sunny, it’s cloudy and dull, the weather’s changing all the time. This bridge, also often called the Rainbow Bridge, was slated for replacement in the 1980s but was saved by local historians and bridge-aficionados who restored it in the late 1990s to its original glory. It’s a beauty.

I call Brian Butko from the parking lot at one end of the bridge, just to let him know where we are, how the weather is, and that we don’t have time to see all the things he says we HAVE to see.

We pause at the very top where there’s a parking lot for a ski resort and school, but then soon start down the western slope of the mountains. We’re not hungry yet, so we look for a ramp back onto the interstate and keep zooming toward San Francisco.

Often when tooling along what-you-might-call the Lincoln Highway today, you can choose to follow the exact oldest possible route, searching out little pieces of roadway that were once the highway, or you can just follow the old highway’s basic path, taking advantage of interstates and bypasses and high-speed travel. While descending from the Donner Pass, we have a chance to hop on I-80, the basic path of least resistance, and we take it.

Jarrett is driving, Bob is sitting in the passenger seat with the camera on his lap, occasionally grabbing a shot of California traffic or an unusual landscape. I’m in the back, trying to keep an eye on the road and the territory we’re crossing, all the while reading and trying to figure out what we’re missing as exit signs fly by.

This is Gold Rush country. This is where, in a cavern in a canyon, excavating for a mine, dwelt a miner, forty-niner and his daughter Clementine. We were dreadful sorry that we had to just grab high speed glimpses of the area as we zipped by.

Colfax, Weimar, Auburn, Newcastle, Penryn, Loomis, Rocklin, Roseville, all are just signs along the interstate or mentions in Butko’s book. We can’t go in search of California stories today.

It’s 1:30 or so by the time we get to the Sacramento area, and rather than even try to find remnants of the Lincoln, we decide simply to follow signs for the capitol building. There’s one line in Butko that says, “The Lincoln Highway took drivers right to the state capitol,” so we decide we’ll take a look, grab a shot and continue on our way.

Of course, finding even a big domed capitol building is not easy in an unfamiliar city, and we get lost because of one-way streets and missed signs, but finally we are just across from the state capitol, and there’s a perfect parking space with time on the meter, so out come the cameras, the tripod, and the three of us.

There’s a rose garden very near our parking space, and it allows us to frame the capitol in some postcard-like shots. We are now purely tourists on the Lincoln Highway, and we tourists still stop to see and take snapshots of grand governmental buildings. But this being August 2007, nearing the end of the fourth year in the Schwarzenegger administration, we obviously wouldn’t mind a cameo appearance by the governor. Could we be so lucky? Ah, the many possible scenarios! Perhaps we’d see him leaving one of the beautiful buildings beside us and then watch him strolling over to the capitol itself? The Terminator returns to work after a quick lunch?

No such luck.

We get a few frames, make a video postcard (watch it), pack back into the van and consider grabbing some lunch before getting back on the interstate.

It’s hot and nearly two-thirty in the afternoon when we climb back into the van at the California capitol building, and I say, “If we’re going to eat lunch, we have to do it now.”

I noticed some signs for Old Sacramento, and I suggest that there may be some interesting eateries there. Bob says there must be places right around this area for all the state government workers, and as we get back on the street, Bob sees a sign for the Capitol Cafe.

“We can probably get a sandwich there,” he says. “All we need is a parking space.” So we drive slowly, looking for a place to pull over, but there’s nothing really close. A block or two later, we see an empty meter on our side of 8th Street, a space in the shade, our favorite kind of parking spot, especially on a scorching, sunny day like this. It’s perfect.

As we lock things up, I say, “Hey, there’s a little place there right across the street. With the awning. It looks French. La Bonne Soupe Cafe. Let’s check it out.”

It’s a tiny place, one little room with maybe 6 or 7 wee tables along the left side and across the front. Most of the room is the cooking area where the chef is busy building sandwiches for the folks who are in line.

Every table is taken. We’re hot and sweaty. It doesn’t seem the easy or logical choice. Bob and Jarrett give it a quick once-over and go back outside to the sidewalk. I am intrigued but think we’ll probably walk back to the Capitol Cafe. I know it’s always good to ask for suggestions, so I turn to the people sitting along the side, “We’re from out of town. Where else can we get some lunch around here?”

Several guys look like construction workers, and they have no immediate ideas. A woman at the table near the door says, “You don’t want to go anywhere else. Can’t you wait? You won’t get a better lunch in Sacramento. This place is great. For the bread alone.”

Wow. I didn’t expect such a passionate endorsement. I go out and tell the guys. They agree to give it a try. Maybe a table will open up before our lunches are ready.

The handwritten menu looks great. The soups (or “potages” as it says) are all printed in plural: French onions, cream of vegetables and cream of mushrooms. And the sandwiches are all interesting possibilities, nothing like fast food.

But Bob and I both need a men’s room, and there’s none immediately apparent. Eventually the chef explains that it’s in the back hallway, but we find it’s locked, and the chef has to come back with a key. I say to Bob, “This seems VERY French in every way, including the weird restroom.”

As you stand in line, you learn the routine. The chef deals with each customer individually, getting that person’s entire order before moving on to the next person. He seems to care very much about the food, slicing all the ingredients for each sandwich as needed. It’s not a fancy place by any means, but the service is so personal that it feels very exclusive, and the crunch of the tiny loaves of bread as he cuts each one to order is totally enticing.

Standing in line, I also learn that the lamb is gone, and when Bob orders, he gets the final pork sandwich. Hmm. I will be happy to try the French garlic sausage. And I decide that I have to partake of the potage too, because this place is called La Bonne Soupe Cafe. The soupe has got to be bonne. I get the cream of vegetables, and Bob asks me to get him a bowl of cream of mushrooms too. By the time I get my food and sit down at our little table, Jarrett is done because he went first, and each order is completed in sequence. Actually I think I am the last person in line for the day.

The food is sublime. The sandwiches are served on the incredible little loaves. The soups are perfectly seasoned, richly flavored and smooth. Great soups. Even the bottled pop is French and delicious. This is a stupendous lunch.

Of course, as we finish, we strike up a conversation with the chef. He is French, from Lyon (where I had lived for a year back in 1973 and 74 when I was a student), and he used to have a restaurant in San Francisco called La Maison, but his life changed, and he moved here to Sacramento several years ago and created this lunch business which allows him to have more time and fewer worries, but he obviously still loves cooking and feeding people. His name is Daniel Pont, and his card identifies him as “Chef – Proprietaire.”

As a rule, I avoid having dessert at lunchtime, but today’s dessert special is creme brulee with Grand Marnier, two of my favorite things in the whole world, so I have to get one. Bob says he will have a taste. And Chef Daniel gets out his torch and finishes the sugary brulee after we have finished our lunches. Perfect timing. We are the last customers of the day; we close down the place.I love the fact that we stumbled onto this cafe because of a parking space and because that woman at the front table (who went back to work before we got our food) was so adamant about staying and waiting.

Of course, we explain to the chef what we’re doing, and we tell him how extraordinary his little restaurant is. We wish it were ON the Lincoln Highway, but it’s not far off, so we’ll get a few shots before we leave, and who knows what will bring us back to Sacramento, but we will stop again. And we will put him in this blog. Daniel says many people write about him on the internet (check out this site for examples.) It’s obvious: every town should have a careful and charming Frenchman making superb lunches, and every traveler should be so lucky as to find such a place.

Refreshed, satisfied, we buy several bottles of that French soda to take with us as we head out to hit the highway again.

The fastest, most direct route from Sacramento to San Francisco would be along I-80 past Davis and Vacaville, through Vallejo and Berkeley to the Bay Bridge, a route that Butko identifies primarily as “3rd Generation” Lincoln Highway. We decide we will be historic for one last time and follow the path (if not the pavement) of the original Lincoln by turning south via Galt and Stockton, swinging west by the Altamont Pass (where windmills twirl on the odd treeless hills that look carpeted) and approaching the Bay Bridge from the south. Interstate 99 is congested and dull.

Jarrett tries to get some shots of vineyards along the way.

Our long lunch has delayed our entry into the city a bit, and we know we have to cross the bridge before 8 pm because it will be closed then so some “seismic safety work” can be done on one certain section of the roadway over the long Labor Day weekend. (Bridge engineers can check out the details here.)

Originally on the Lincoln Highway, one would have crossed the bay on a car ferry, but I can’t find any such service today. There are passenger ferries, but nothing that seems ready to take unexpected vehicles over the water. We have to take the bridge.

I am driving, Jarrett and Bob both shooting out the right-side windows, and Bob is ready to co-pilot me to California Street, having scoped out all the pertinent routes through downtown San Francisco on his trusty old AAA map.

We pull over near the intersection of California Street and Park Presidio Boulevard to find the next-to-last surviving concrete Lincoln Highway Marker from 1928. It’s beside a bus stop, and it’s probably still there because no one has ever cared enough to move or remove it. We grab a few shots.

We end up considering the markers as old friends along the way. They can be reassuring and inspiring when you think you’re hopelessly lost. They somehow still connect us to the 1920s and the Boy Scouts who helped put these markers at pertinent points all along the route. They seem to deserve respect simply for surviving.

This penultimate marker is mentioned on the penultimate page of Butko’s book. And in that same paragraph, he also describes where to find the final marker, and that’s where we’re headed.