Henry Bourne Joy

(Wikipedia) Henry Bourne Joy (November 23, 1864 – November 6, 1936) was President of the Packard Motor Car Company, and a major developer of automotive activities as well as being a social activist.
In 1913, Joy and Carl Graham Fisher were driving forces as principal organizers of the Lincoln Highway Association, a group dedicated to building a concrete road from New York to San Francisco. After the first several years, Fisher had become more involved instead with creation of the north-south Dixie Highway project and became a developer of Miami Beach, but Joy was dedicated to the Lincoln Highway for the long-haul. Naming it after former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was one of the moves Joy led, and his Lincoln Highway project was completed in his lifetime, despite lack of financial support by automotive leaders such as Henry Ford (Sr.). Continued 

 

Woody Guthrie

(Wikipedia) Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie (July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) was an American singer-songwriter and folk musician whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his guitar. His best-known song is "This Land Is Your Land." Many of his recorded songs are archived in the Library of Congress.
Such songwriters as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Pete Seeger, Joe Strummer, Billy Bragg, Jeff Tweedy and Tom Paxton have acknowledged Guthrie as a major influence. Continued

Washington Metro

(Wikipedia) ... WMATA approved plans for a 98-mile (158 km) regional system in 1968, and construction on the metro began in 1969, with groundbreaking on December 9. The system opened March 27, 1976, with 4.6 miles (7 kilometers) available on the Red Line with five stations from Rhode Island Avenue to Farragut North, all in the District of Columbia. Arlington County, Virginia was linked to the system on July 1, 1976; Montgomery County, Maryland on February 6, 1978; Prince George's County, Maryland on November 20, 1978; and Fairfax County, Virginia and Alexandria, Virginia on December 17, 1983. Continued

Photo: MDRails

Library Benefactor Andrew Carnegie

(LoC) On March 12, 1901, Andrew Carnegie, one of the world's foremost industrialists, offered the city of New York $5.2 million for the construction of sixty-five branch libraries. The Scottish immigrant's fortune eventually would establish many more libraries and charitable foundations.
Born in 1835, Carnegie immigrated to the United States in 1848 with his parents. Working in American industry and making shrewd investments, he amassed a fortune before the age of thirty. In the 1870s, he noted the potential of the steel industry and founded J. Edgar Thomson Steel Works near Pittsburgh, which eventually evolved into the Carnegie Steel Company. The company boomed, and in 1901, Carnegie sold it to financier J. P. Morgan for $480 million, received $250 million as his personal share, and retired. Continued

After High Line’s Success, Other Cities Look Up

(NYTimes) Phone calls and visitors and, yes, dreams from around the world are pouring into the small offices of the Friends of the High Line on West 20th Street in Manhattan these days.
Detroit is thinking big about an abandoned train station. Jersey City and Philadelphia have defunct railroad beds, and Chicago has old train tracks that don’t look like much now, but maybe they too...
The High Line’s success as an elevated park, its improbable evolution from old trestle into glittering urban amenity, has motivated a whole host of public officials and city planners to consider or revisit efforts to convert relics from their own industrial pasts into potential economic engines. Continued

Image: Abandoned trestle at Safe Harbor, PA, part of the old Atglen & Susquehanna "Low Grade Route" railroad line, abandoned by Norfolk Southern and squandered by local municipalities. It had the potential to be a world class rail trail. (MDRails)

On the Boardwalk

(LoC) On June 26, 1870, the first section of the Atlantic City Boardwalk opened along the New Jersey beach. ... Alexander Boardman, a railroad conductor, and Jacob Keim, a hotelier, conceived of the idea of constructing a boardwalk as a means of keeping sand out of the railroad cars and hotels. The city used its tax revenues to build an eight-foot-wide temporary wooden walkway from the beach into town that could be dismantled during the winter.
... Any consideration of the boardwalk demands at least a nod to salt water taffy, a favorite beachside treat. Taffy, a candy made of corn syrup and white sugar is boiled; the confection is pulled and folded, then rolled into a long strip from which shorter (about two-inch-long) strips are cut, wrapped in stick resistant paper, and sold. Along the Atlantic City Boardwalk folks have purchased the product since at least the early 1880s. In 1925, the Supreme Court ruled that the term "salt water taffy" could not be trademarked, a decision which saved candy manufacturers from paying millions of dollars to John R. Edmiston of Wildwood, New Jersey, who claimed to be the originator of the candy and had applied for registration of the term with the U.S. Patent Office. Continued

Baltimore's Washington Monument closed after engineering firm finds flaws

(Baltimore Sun) Baltimore's Washington Monument, the first civic monument to the nation's first president, has been closed to the public until further notice because of safety concerns.
... The closing came after city officials received an engineering study warning that visitors shouldn't be allowed to venture onto the balcony at the top of the marble monument until repairs are made to the stonework there. According to the report, mortar is missing and metal support brackets are rusting. Continued

Image: Library of Congress

Pretty Dam Devoted

(North County News) George Lang has been such a regular visitor at Prettyboy Dam while crews have been stabilizing the gatehouse since July 2008, that he has his own hardhat and safety vest hanging in the construction trailer.
When murky water prevented divers from seeing the gatehouse's foundation below the surface, Lang, who lives less than a mile away, came to the rescue. He sorted through more than 2,000 of his own photographs of the dam and delivered detailed images he took in 2002 when the dam's water level was down 62 feet. Continued

Image: Baltimore City DPW