[PRCo] An early motoring vacation?

[Fred Schneider]

Some of you might enjoy this item.   Before you open it, please be reminded, if you did not already know it, that the Pennsylvania Turnpike was conceived as an "all-weather road" across the Appalachian mountains and as a highway for truckers.   The seven tunnels helped to make it an all-weather road, keep it several hundred feet lower and several degrees warmer in the winter, and, in the case of Sideling and Rays hills, out of the fog.   

This article is five years before the Turnpike.   At this time we had no limited access highways in the United States.   The best we could offer were some three lane roads with that suicide passing lane in the middle.   Most of our roads in 1935 were two lane.   Some in rural areas, particularly in rural states were still unpaved.   

Now here is a reference to an Azela tour of the south conceived in February 1935 by the Pittsburgh Automobile Club (AAA). Today we would head right down through the heart of West-by-God-Virginia on interstate 79 and 77.   In 1935 it is possible or probable that some of that route would still be over gravel or dirt.  I can recall even in 1955 how it could take literally hours just to drive from the north end of the West Virginia Turnpike (in name only) at Charlestown to Parkersburg on twisting two-lane roads.   In the 1950s, U. S. 50 across West Virginia and Maryland was an all-day adventure.  

So look at the map on this and see that in 1935, the best way south from Pittsburgh was to drive route 30 over the mountains to Bedford and Breezewood, and then work your way southeast to Washington DC, and then south and southwest where the sea breezes be just a little more clement that going directly south farther inland.   

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ZHEbAAAAIBAJ&sjid=kksEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4218%2C4330287

As a post script:  my grandfather from Pittsburgh was an early auto tourist.  He used to try to make us understand what it was like going from Pittsburgh to Virginia Beach in the summer in an automobile with a gravity fuel system.  At the base of each of the mountains in Pennsylvania or Maryland, depending on which route you drove, he would turn around, and then back the car up the mountain in order to keep the fuel tank higher than the carburetor.   And you thought you have it rough when heavy traffic on the Interstate forces you down to 55 mph!!!    

My father remembered riding with the "Pap" one day in northwestern Pennsylvania.   Grandpa stopped outside of Meadville, pulled out a rag, and dusted off the car.   There were still a lot of dirt roads and the old man didn't want to be seen driving into town in a dirty car.   

Remember these stories when you think about NCL taking the business away from the trolleys.   The trolleys were handy when our wagons sunk up to their hubs in mud during the spring melt.   After the roads were paved, we loved our cars.   Yes, Phillip, I am going to editorialize.   We bought cars because the man with a car ended up with a girl friend and later a wife.   That was a little more difficult forcing the date to ride on the streetcar and not nearly as much fun.