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Talk about a head of state. Once upon a time, Ol’ Abe stood watch at Sherman Summit, the highest point on his namesake coast-to-coast highway, Lincoln Highway.
Even though Elmer’s teeming forest of bottle trees stands alongside one of those desolate stretches of old Route 66 between Barstow and San Bernadino, he says it doesn’t have much to do with the famous roadway.
It’s a sprawling pink and white motel complex on the edge of town, with pictures and paintings of the Madonna family that owns it (and big stars who knew them) liberally sprinkled around the lobby.
Paramount Studios was built on the back half of the original Hollywood Cemetery, where the studio is still in operation today. The cemetery of choice for most of the founders of Hollywood’s great studios,
The genius of this place is in its adaptation to the terrain. The story began back in 1905, when Forestiere Baldasare, a Sicilian immigrant, had come westward in the early 1900s with dreams of farming success.
In 1920, when Bert Vaughn started work on his Desert View Tower, people motoring across the mountains that jut up out here near the Mexican border inevitably needed a place to stop and cool down.
Despite being a California State Landmark, this folk art environment was dismantled. Luckily, some of the pieces were saved and can be seen in the California Route 66 Museum: “Hula Ville – Twentieth Century Folk Art”.
Located on Pier 45 at the Fisherman’s Wharf, there are over 300 vintage and novel coin operated machines, collected by the late Edward Galland Zelinsky, who started his collection at the ripe old age of 11.
It’s a jackalope two-fer! Outside is the fiberglass beauty, and the jack inside the Exxon Country Store…ohhhh, it’s a big one and fur-covered.
This funky pink and yellow concrete dog stands guard at the Ranch Store, near the entrance of the Badlands National Park. The anorexic steer sign atop the store might even be better.