![]() ![]() Kunkle is giving a photo presentation at the Harley Davidson Museum called “The American Road, Then And Now” on July 26. Turn off the GPS - just go and have fun!” He added: “You can do some research ahead of time to look for roadside attractions, but it’s fun to randomly discover things. “Just start in your town and the surrounding area, and take roads you’re unfamiliar with. “You don’t have to take an epic Route 66 trip,” he said. He said travelers should include the attractions in their plans. Kunkle said that while many have closed, there are still a number of roadside attractions that survive today - including must-see sites like the 80-year-old Petrified Creatures Museum in Richfield Springs, NY. He even spent seven years tracking down all 39 performers from the Missouri Aquarama show and arranged a reunion. He’s also met many of the people who have been behind those attractions. ![]() Part of Kunkle’s work involves tracking down memorabilia from roadside attractions that have closed over the years. “So, we went home and quit our jobs and started Vintage Roadside.” “We got in the car and had one of those life moments where we said, ‘Maybe we should take some time and let people know what happened to these places,’” said Kunkle. Kunkle soon discovered that many locals didn’t know the stories behind the sites. I-80 is one of the Big 5 east-to-west interstates (I-90, I-70, I-40 and I-10). Including this merger, the interstate runs near a whopping 2,900 miles in length This makes it the 2nd longest interstate in the nation, coming in just below I-90 by about 120 miles. Kunkle said he and his wife made roadside attractions their life’s work eight years ago, when on a road trip in central New York they began noticing old shops and attractions that had closed. I-80 is unique because it merges with I-90 for a while in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. Many roadside attractions, however, closed after the rise of the interstate system in the 1950s, which made a quick stop at a random attraction less easy to pull off. Sites like alligator and ostrich farms in Florida, an Aquarama show in Missouri featuring people dressed as mermaids and sea creatures, and a clown motel in Nevada offered unique travel opportunities to motorists on vacation. Jeff Kunkle, co-founder of the Vintage Roadside project, said there was a boom in roadside attractions with the expansion of U.S. An expert on those attractions will soon visit Milwaukee to share his love of these unique and the unusual tourist sites - as well as the story they tell about American culture, travel, and history. From a petrified creature museum in New York to a rock garden in Oregon, American roadways have a long history of roadside attractions. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |