Transportation History Committee

Preserving the Historic Road 2010

2010-08-20T11:54:00.001-04:00

REGISTER NOW for Preserving the Historic Road 2010!

Sept 9-12, 2010 at the Washington Marriott at Metro Center

Join us in the Nation's Capital for the Seventh Biennial of the Preserving the Historic Road conference. The program for this year's event promises exciting learning opportunities for those of you fighting the battle to preserve historic roads. Learn the latest tools and techniques from leading practioners from the National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Highway Administration, the National Park Service, USDA Forest Service; leading professional practitioners, state and local transportation and planning departments, state historic preservation officers, university professors, and foreign scholars. Make your plans now to join us in DC!

Register Today -- Final Registration Deadline closes September 3! To register and view conference sessions, tour, and details, please visit:

http://www.historicroads.org/

Conference highlights:

- Opening reception in the historic National Building Museum, one of the great interior spaces in Washington, DC

- Opening remarks from Jon Jarvis, Director of the National Park Service, Gabe Klein, the energetic head of the District of Columbia DOT and representatives from AASHTO and US/ICOMOS

- Keynote by Dan Marriott, founder of Preserving the Historic Road

- 22 educational sessions addressing real solutions for historic road engineering, preservation, and the latest in state of the art documentation practices

- A record number of international participation from the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Israel, and Australia

- Friday Movie Night, featuring vintage highway film footage

- Closing Keynote by Dr. Ted Sky, who will tell us how the battle to fund the National Road in the early 1800s set the stage for federal investment for centuries to come

- Saturday Dinner along the George Washington Memorial Parkway with sweeping views of the Potomac River

- Exciting tours featuring rural roads in Maryland and Virginia, the 200-year old National Pike, historic Georgetown, National Park Service parkways, and historic US Route 1

Whether a historic preservationist, engineer, transportation planner, landscape architect, archaeologist, cultural resource specialist, compliance specialist or historic road advocate, you won't want to miss this important meeting.

US Army - Eisenhower Convoy Transportation History Video Tapes

2010-08-18T14:49:00.002-04:00

For those interested, through the George Mason University Libraries, a collection that contains Eisenhower convoy video tapes is publicly available. This collection contains tapes, documents, and books on transportation planning. Included is a VHS videotape of footage from 1919 on a US Army convoy traveling across the country on Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental highway in America.

http://sca.gmu.edu/finding_aids/gifford.html

TRB History Committee Mid-Year Meeting Agenda

2010-08-18T07:35:00.001-04:00

Below is the link to the mid-year meeting agenda:

https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B9OXyiyGWnNRZGU2YjIxYzAtMWNjZi00NGExLWI3ZDMtNmUzZDY0ZGYxODMx&hl=en

Friends List - Please Join Our Friends List For History Committee Activities

2010-08-16T09:29:00.001-04:00

2010 Annual Report and Annual Meeting Notes

2010-08-10T12:05:00.002-04:00

New documents are available on the Google site, which include the 2010 Annual Report and Notes from the 2010 Annual Meeting.

https://sites.google.com/site/trbcommitteeabg50/home/files

Alternatively, the file are directly available through google documents:
Annual Report:
https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B9OXyiyGWnNRMzY2MjllN2YtNzNhYy00NGI0LTk5NGYtY2NmZjhiNjk3Zjc2&hl=en

Annual Meeting Notes:
https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B9OXyiyGWnNRMTc1OGQ3ZmEtYTE1Yy00OWE5LWJlOTMtZTBiOWRkYTY0MzZk&hl=en

TRB History Committee Mid-Year Meeting

2010-08-10T07:21:00.000-04:00

The TRB History Committee Mid-Year Meeting will be August 18, from 9 AM to 3 PM (Eastern Time) at TRB. More details and call-in information will follow.

TRB Mid-Year Meeting - History Hike Information

2010-07-07T10:00:00.002-04:00

Visit the History Hike Blog for information on this summer's history hike in Minneapolis:

http://transportationhistoryhike.blogspot.com/2010/07/minneapolis-history-hike-2010.html

Jameson Doig Paper on International Trade Centers

2010-02-17T07:18:00.005-05:00

Click the link below to see Jameson Doig's paper:

America’s Leading International Trade Centers and their Entrepreneurial Agencies: Challenges and Strategies in the New York and Los Angeles Regions

ABSTRACT:

This is a comparative and historical analysis of the trade-development challenges that face the New York and Los Angeles areas, where more than one-third of all international U.S. airborne and waterborne trade (measured by value) enters and leaves this country. These two regions historically developed different governance systems for their airports, seaports and freight-rail systems, dating back to the early 1900s. New York has a centralized system for its air and sea terminals, featuring the bi-state Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Los Angeles has a highly decentralized system with semi-autonomous city departments in Los Angeles and Long Beach governing the seaports and international airports. The Los Angeles region’s freight-rail is governed by public/private joint-powers agreements, while New York’s is largely private.

What impact have these different governance systems had on trade, infrastructure, and regional development? How have the regions grappled with challenges such as the hard times of the 1930s, the early 1990s, and the current economic downturn? Can these metropolitan areas manage the expected trade growth while dealing with increasingly strict environmental regulations, the greater costs imposed by post-9/11 security concerns, and newly empowered local communities?

The entrepreneurial agencies discussed in this paper will occupy a major role in meeting these challenges, which will require greater levels of cooperation among these and other public and private entities. Does the multi-functional approach of the Port Authority place it in a stronger position to manage the challenges of the early 21st century? If so, how can such a large, complex agency balance burdens and benefits, and maintain accountability to its different constituencies? Does Los Angeles need more bureaucracy and less democracy? With wholesale governance changes more or less off the table, how can public officials in that region overcome their endemic fractionalization to serve the greater good?

In their varying structures and range of responsibilities, these major entrepreneurial agencies illustrate distinctive ways in which large regions can design and operate transportation networks, as cities and states grapple with economic-development needs in a global environment. Their successes (and failures), and the opportunities and obstacles they face, should offer useful lessons to other cities and regions around the world.

This paper is divided into three sections. The first part examines the early 20th century creation of these public agencies and their major projects and development through 1990. The second section explores the mounting challenges to these agencies and their trade facilities, 1990-2009. The final section considers strategies needed to grapple with long-term challenges, including competitive threats from rival trading regions, the need to handle expanding air and sea traffic, security issues, and environmental concerns. We address these questions using original source materials, interviews with part and current officials and stakeholders, and statistical analyses of regional trade, traffic and economic data.

Transportation History Committee Triennial Strategic Plan (TSP)

2010-01-07T09:50:00.000-05:00

Transportation History Committee Triennial Strategic Plan

TRB Annual Meeting

2010-01-07T09:13:00.000-05:00

Greetings and Happy New Year to the members and friends of TRB's Transportation History Committee.

This message contains information about the committee's activities at the annual meeting next week in Washington, and also a request for a volunteer committee representative for the "new attendees" reception on Sunday 2:30-4:00 pm at that meeting.

1. The committee meeting is on WEDNESDAY, January 13, from 10:15-noon, in the Hilton room 1919 East. A draft agenda is below, and if you have additional agenda items, please let me know. WE WILL TRY TO BREAK BY 11:45 IN ORDER TO ACCOMMODATE PEOPLE ATTENDING THE CHAIRMAN'S LUNCH.

2. The committee is sponsoring a session Wednesday, January 13, 4:30-6:00 pm, in the Hilton Jefferson East room, on the Influence of "The Urban Transportation Problem" by Meyer, Kain and Wohl, organized and chaired by Alan Pisarski with presentations by Martin Wachs (Rand Corp), Don Pickrell (USDOT Volpe Center), and Eric Beshers (ICF Consulting). More details below.

3. The committee is co-sponsoring as session on Tuesday, January 12, from 8-9:45 a.m., in the Hilton Jefferson West room, on "Knowledge Management: Successful Practices for Succession Planning." More details below.

Event Title: Transportation History Committee

Event Date: Jan 13 2010 10:15AM- 12:00PM

Event Location: Hilton

Presiding Officers: Gifford, Jonathan L. - George Mason University

Sponsored By: Transportation History (ABG50)

DRAFT Agenda

Call to order

Self introductions

Review of Committee Activities at 2010 Meeting

History Committee and TRB Emeritus/a members (Pisarski)

Activities for 2010

Summer 2010 meeting (participation in July TRB meeting in Minneapolis?)

Other business

Adjourn

Event Number: 702

Event Title: Influence of Meyer, Kain, and Wohl's "The Urban Transportation Problem"

Event Date: Jan 13 2010 4:30PM- 6:00PM

Event Location: Hilton

Presiding Officers: Pisarski, Alan E. - Consultant

Sponsored By: Transportation History (ABG50)

Presentations:

The RAND Role (P10-0774)

Wachs, Martin - RAND Corporation

The University Influence (P10-0776)

Pickrell, Don H. - Volpe National Transportation Systems Center

The Economic Influence (P10-0785)

Beshers, Eric - ICF Consulting

Event Number: 421

Event Title: Knowledge Management: Successful Practices for Succession Planning

Event Date: Jan 12 2010 8:00AM- 9:45AM

Event Location: Hilton, Jefferson West

Presiding Officers: Stickel, Jack R. - Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities

Sponsored By: Strategic Management (ABC10)

Transportation Asset Management (ABC40)

Transportation Education and Training (ABG20)

Technology Transfer (ABG30)

Library and Information Science for Transportation (ABG40)

Transportation History (ABG50)

Statewide Transportation Data and Information Systems (ABJ20)

Visualization in Transportation (ABJ95)

Maintenance and Operations Personnel (AHD15)

Public Transportation (AP000)

Presentations:

What Is Knowledge Management and How Does It Help You? (P10-0592)

Hammer, Maureen L. - Virginia Department of Transportation

Learning How to Train Employees for the Workplace (P10-0796)

Brown, Shane - Washington State University

Planning for the Future: Succession Planning and Knowledge Management (P10-0798)

Pedersen, Neil J. - Maryland State Highway Administration

Subject Areas:

Data and Information Systems

Research and Education

Investing in Our Transportation Future – BOLD Ideas to Meet BIG Challenges

First Diverging Diamond Interchange in the US

2009-06-24T16:18:00.002-04:00

A piece of current US transportation history being made from the Bolivar Herald-Free Press in Bolivar, MO:

New interchange at Mo. 13, I-44 will open Monday

Bridge closing at 10 p.m. Saturday
Published: Friday, June 19, 2009 5:05 AM CDT

The Kansas Expressway (Mo. 13) bridge over I-44 in north Springfield is scheduled to be closed at 10 p.m. Saturday and reopened early Monday in its new Diverging Diamond Interchange configuration, the Missouri Department of Transportation said.

The bridge closing will require the same driving adjustments and detours used during a similar bridge closing last weekend when the final asphalt driving surface was laid in areas at the interchange.

Drivers need to be aware that the Diverging Diamond Interchange will require a change in driving pattern starting before rush hour Monday morning, June 22.

Under the new Diverging Diamond Interchange configuration, the opposing lanes of Kansas Expressway will criss-cross at traffic signals at the ends of the bridge over I-44. Crossing the bridge, oncoming traffic will be on the right, separated by concrete barriers and screening. This will give left-turning vehicles on Kansas Expressway a “free left” onto the I-44 on-ramps.

At the same time, traffic continuing north or south on Kansas Expressway will be able to travel more steadily through the interchange.

Signs and pavement markings will clearly guide drivers and help prevent making a wrong turn into the opposing lanes.

Concrete islands to help with the traffic flow will be installed in the next few weeks.

Bridge closed, ramps open

Even though the Kansas Expressway bridge will be closed for part of this weekend, the ramps will remain open. However, drivers will only be able to make right turns to enter I-44 from Kansas Expressway or exit from I-44 onto Kansas Expressway.

Drivers on Kansas Expressway who wish to cross I-44 will have to use I-44 to get around the bridge closing:

• Southbound Kansas Expressway (Mo. 13) traffic will be detoured west on I-44 to West Bypass (U.S. 160) to turn around.See Interchange Page 2A

• Northbound Kansas Expressway traffic will be detoured east on I-44 to U.S. 65 and north to County Road 102 (Valley Water Mill Road) to turn around.

During the Kansas Expressway bridge closing, contractor crews will put down permanent pavement markings, install new highway signs, modify the traffic signals and complete other work before reopening the bridge Monday morning in the new Diverging Diamond Interchange configuration.

Bad weather could cause postponement until the following weekend.

Drivers will be able to reach the many businesses along Kansas Expressway during the bridge closing, although it may take a few minutes longer to get there.

Watch out for backups on Kansas Expressway approaching I-44 and on I-44 approaching the off-ramps at Kansas Expressway.

Opening the First-in-USA Diverging Diamond Interchange June 22

When Kansas Expressway is reopened over I-44 on Monday morning, June 22, the interchange will be in the Diverging Diamond Interchange configuration.

The Diverging Diamond Interchange is designed to improve traffic flow through the interchange, although it won’t solve all the congestion problems in that area.

A separate project that will help traffic flow is the relocation further south of a traffic signal at Evergreen Street. This project is also under construction. The existing signal at Evergreen Street will be turned off when the Diverging Diamond Interchange is opened, even though the new signal to the south may not be ready to use.

The Diverging Diamond Interchange at Kansas Expressway and I-44 is the first of its type built in the USA.

Project summary

The prime contractor is Hartman & Co. Construction of Springfield.

The project will:

• Remove existing driving surface on bridge, make deck repairs and put down new driving surface.

• Build pedestrian walkway down center of opposing lanes, divided by concrete barriers and screening paddles.

• Install new traffic signals, new striping and other pavement markings, new overhead signs, new islands, new highway lighting and LED lighting for new pedestrian walkway.• Build new ramp that will enable drivers on the westbound I-44 off-ramp to slip onto Norton Road without getting onto Kansas Expressway.

http://www.bolivarmonews.com/articles/2009/06/19/news/doc4a3ab767bdac1330147843.txt

TRB Committee Homepages - Updated Listing

2009-06-24T15:08:00.001-04:00

An updated list of TRB committee homepages is now available:
http://www.trb.org/directory/comm_homepages.asp

History Committee Mid-Year Meeting June 15, 2009

2009-06-12T14:59:00.000-04:00

The Monday agenda and dial-in number are as follows:

TRB History Committee - Mid-Year Meeting
Monday, June 15, 2009, 9:00 a.m. (Eastern)
500 Fifth Street, Washington, DC 20016
(Dial-in number 866-606-4717, access code: 3829104)

9:00 - Call to order, self-introductions, Seattle summer meeting history walk (Rolf Schmidt)
9:30 - Discussion of draft Triennial Strategic Plan
10:30 - Break
10:45 - Discussion of draft Triennial Strategic Plan (continued)
Noon - Lunch (4th Floor Cafeteria)
1:00 - Plans for 2010 annual meeting, other business, adjourn

History Committee Mid-Year Meeting 2009

2009-06-04T07:57:00.000-04:00

The history committee's mid-year meeting will be at the Keck Center, 500 5th Street, in Washington, D.C., on Monday, June 15, from 9-3.

Agenda details to follow.

PA Transportation History Sources

2009-03-02T09:27:00.000-05:00

1. The commonwealth of Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission:

http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt?open=512&mode=2&objID=1426

This site has links to the Pennsylvania State Archives; the Bureau for Historic Preservation and the State Museum.

2. The Senator John Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh. This collection concentrates on western Pennsylvania history.

http://www.heinzhistorycenter.org

3. History of aeronautics in PA:

William F. Trimble, "High Frontier: A History of Aeronautics in Pennsylvania," (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982).

4. Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania:

http://www.rrmuseumpa.org/

2009 Mid-Year Meeting Location - Seattle, WA or Washington, DC

2009-02-17T19:29:00.000-05:00

Greetings all:

Martine Micozzi needs us to make a decision on the location of the History Committee’s 2009 mid-year meeting. As you may recall, TRB’s wider Joint Summer Conference will take place this summer in Seattle, Washington, from July 19-22. We have the option of either scheduling our committee’s mid-year meeting in Seattle during the Joint Conference, or holding our meeting independently, in the greater Washington, DC, area, in July or August.

Please respond to me with your preference by the end of this week (Feb. 20), so that we can tell Martine whether or not she needs to plan on us in Seattle. Thank you for your time and prompt attention, and please let me know if you have any questions.

Matt

TRB History Committee Secretary

Matthew G. Anderson
matthew.anderson@MNHS.ORG
Curator
Minnesota Historical Society
345 Kellogg Boulevard
West St. Paul, MN 55102-1906
Ph. (651) 259-3256
Fx. (651) 297-2967
www.mnhs.org

Highway History - NY Times Article

2009-02-02T10:21:00.000-05:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/automobiles/12LIMP.html?_r=1&nl=wheels&emc=wheelsa2

A 100-Year-Old Dream: A Road Just for Cars

By PHIL PATTON

Published: October 9, 2008

IT survives only as segments of other highways, as a right of way for power lines and as a bike trail, but the Long Island Motor Parkway still holds a sense of magic as what some historians say is the country’s first road built specifically for the automobile. It opened 100 years ago last Friday as a rich man’s dream.

As detailed in a new book, “The Long Island Motor Parkway” by Howard Kroplick and Al Velocci (Arcadia Publishing), the parkway ran about 45 miles across Long Island, from Queens to Ronkonkoma, and was created by William Kissam Vanderbilt II, the great-grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt.

The younger Vanderbilt was a car enthusiast who loved to race. He had set a speed record of 92 miles an hour in 1904, the same year he created his own race, the Vanderbilt Cup.
But his race came under fire after a spectator was killed in 1906, and Vanderbilt wanted a safe road on which to hold the race and on which other car lovers could hurl their new machines free of the dust common on roads made for horses. The parkway would also be free of “interference from the authorities,” he said in a speech.

So he created a toll road for high-speed automobile travel. It was built of reinforced concrete, had banked turns, guard rails and, by building bridges, he eliminated intersections that would slow a driver down. The Long Island Motor Parkway officially opened on Oct. 10, 1908, and closed in 1938.

Paul Daniel Marriott, a highway historian and consultant in Washington, said road designers began to take the car into account around 1900. Like Vanderbilt, these early car owners were mostly wealthy men; they were called “automobilists” on the model of “bicyclists.”

“Cars were seen as objects for leisure, something to be used on weekends,” Mr. Marriott said in an interview. “No one dreamed then of commuting to work by car.” The automobile was seen as way of escaping the tyranny of the railroad schedule, Mr. Marriott added. “It was a way of interacting with nature.”

To finance the parkway, according to historical accounts, Vanderbilt and his associates raised $2 million from investors, some of whom thought the road would raise property values on the Gold Coast of Long Island. The road’s cost eventually rose to more than $6 million, and a $2 toll (about $45 today) was established. Regular patrons of the highway could buy a medallion good for a year’s passage.

Even the toll houses were worthy of a Vanderbilt: the first six were designed by the architect John Russell Pope, who also created the Jefferson Memorial and the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda at the Museum of Natural History in New York. The toll takers and families lived in the houses, called lodges. One of these has been moved to Garden City, where it has been preserved and houses an exhibition on the history of the highway. Other lodges became homes.

The Long Island Motor Parkway did not solve the problem it was created to address. The race was run successfully enough on the new road in 1908 and 1909, but there were two fatal crashes in 1910, pretty much ending road races on Long Island.

Soon, traffic grew light on the road. In the Great Gatsby era of the 1920s bootleggers found the parkway a convenient link between their delivery points on secluded beaches and the booming liquor market of Manhattan. The Vanderbilt Cup Race moved elsewhere, notably to Roosevelt Raceway in 1936 and 1937, when Ferdinand Porsche arrived to watch his Auto Union take first place.

By then, the public had access to cars as well. When Mr. Vanderbilt began, car owners were feared and resented in many areas, and speed limits were set as low as 5 m.p.h. Woodrow Wilson feared that popular irritation at rich motorists would be socially disruptive. “Nothing has spread Socialistic feeling in this country more than the use of automobiles,” he declared in 1906 when he was president of Princeton University. “To the countryman they are a picture of arrogance of wealth with all its independence and carelessness.”

But by the end of Vanderbilt’s life (he died in 1944), the public had come to feel entitled to car ownership. And there was growing pressure for public highways, like the parkways that the urban planner Robert Moses was building.

In 1938, Moses refused Vanderbilt’s appeal to incorporate the motor parkway into his new parkway system. The motor parkway just could not compete with the public roads, even after the toll was reduced to 40 cents, and Moses eventually gained control of Vanderbilt’s pioneering road for back taxes of about $80,000. The day of public roads had come, supplanting private highways.

Today, the course of the road and a few ruined overpass bridges, guard rails and mileposts have been documented in books and Web sites, including VanderbiltCupRaces.com.

Part of the parkway and name survive as Suffolk County Road 67 (radio traffic reports still call the road the motor parkway). A small stretch was also incorporated into the Meadowbrook Parkway. But the best place to see remnants of the road is in Cunningham Park in Queens, where two of the 65 bridges that carried it over other roads remain. One is at 73rd Avenue and 199th Street. Another crosses Hollis Hills Terrace. Another original bridge crosses Springfield Boulevard. The old right of way is incorporated into the Brooklyn-Queens Greenway for bikers and walkers.

There is a certain irony that a road built for the most modern means of transportation is now being used for the oldest. The parkway marked the beginning of a process: the road was designed for the car. But in offering higher speeds, the parkway and other modern roads would push cars to their technical limits and beyond, inspiring innovation. In that sense, the first modern automobile highway helped to create the modern automobile.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 11, 2009 An article on Oct. 12 about the defunct Long Island Motor Parkway misstated the location of one of the remaining overpasses in Queens. It is at 73rd Avenue near 199th Street, not 99th Street. A reader pointed out the error in an e-mail message on Dec. 30.

A version of this article appeared in print on October 12, 2008, on page AU10 of the New York edition.

Disney's Magic Highway from 1958

2009-01-27T12:13:00.000-05:00

An excerpt from the 1958 Disneyland TV Show episode entitled Magic Highway USA:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8jZtwRJnRs

Aviation History - NY Times Article

2009-01-26T09:47:00.000-05:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/nyregion/26american.html?_r=1

January 26, 2009

Lobster on the Menu And History in the Air

By ANDY NEWMAN

The flaps deployed, the landing gear descended and the gleaming Boeing 707 touched down on New York asphalt. More precisely, according to a contemporary account, the jet “settled like a snowflake on the icy runway at Idlewild Airport.”

It was a few minutes after 4 p.m. on Jan. 25, 1959, and aviation history had just been made by American Airlines Flight 2: the first transcontinental commercial jet trip, from Los Angeles to what was then known as Idlewild, and is now known as Kennedy International Airport.

It was not the first commercial jet flight (that was B.O.A.C. from London to Rome in 1952) or the first nonstop transcontinental flight (T.W.A., Los Angeles to New York, 1953) or even the first commercial long-haul jet trip (Pan American, Idlewild to Paris, October 1958).

But it was still a major milestone back in the giddy dawn of the jet era, cutting more than three hours and many decibels off the bone-rattling ordeal presented by cross-country propeller-plane flights, and was therefore cause for considerable celebration. Passengers who rode on the return flight from New York to Los Angeles later in the day recalled on Sunday that nearly everyone was tipsy, and the earlier flight from Los Angeles seemed to be, at the very least, an intoxicating experience.

“The shrinking effect of the jetliner upon geography distorted the earth’s face,” wrote The Los Angeles Times’s on-flight correspondent, Cordell Hicks. “The plane’s enchanting quality consists precisely of its capacity to displace shapes, categories, images and events.”

Fifty years later, cross-country jet travel has lost some of its luster, but for those lucky enough to have gotten in on the ground floor, rubbing shoulders with celebrity passengers like the actress Susan Hayward, the sports tycoon Jack Kent Cooke and the poet Carl Sandburg, fond memories linger.

“It was a wonderful experience,” Anne Breyton, 77, a flight attendant on the westbound debut flight, said on Sunday from her home in California.

Daniel Solon, a transportation journalist who in 1959 worked in public relations for American Airlines, credited Ms. Breyton and her colleagues for the trip’s success.

“The flight attendants were extremely attractive,” Mr. Solon, who is also 77 and now lives in Spain, said. “They all made it a good party. I know that sounds a little frivolous, but we had a very good time, and five and a half hours later we were on the ground in L.A., and having a good time there.”

The scene was straight out of “Mad Men.” Alcohol and cigarette smoke flowed freely. The flight attendants, who would have been called stewardesses, wore heels with their snug blue uniforms — “Most people wouldn’t fit into it today unless you were anorexic,” Ms. Breyton told a radio reporter in 1999 — though they were allowed to change into flats during the meal service.

And the food! No record of the inaugural repast survives (though Mr. Hicks noted that “breakfast was served at 10:15 a.m. over Grand Junction, Colo., cocktails at 11:26 a.m. over Des Moines and lunch at 12:30 p.m. over Cleveland”). But Ms. Breyton dug up a list of the rotating menus American offered on the route. Highlights included fresh Maine lobster with capers, filet mignon, herb-buttered fan tan rolls and macaroon ice cream balls with brandied apricot sauce.
Ms. Breyton said the menus were for first class, but, hard as it is to believe, Mr. Solon said that in those days the same food was served in coach.

Today, American’s domestic cross-country coach passengers may buy a 5.75-ounce package of Lay’s Stax potato crisps for $3, or, if they’re famished, an Asian chicken wrap ($6).

Of course, the ticket itself was relatively expensive. A round-trip in coach in 1959 cost $238.80 — that’s $1,743 in today’s dollars, or about 6 times the price of a bargain coach fare on American today.

On the other hand, the earlier flights were not just cushier but faster: 4 ½ hours eastbound and, because of headwinds, 5 ½ westbound. In today’s stacked-up skies, New York-to-Los Angeles flights typically take an hour longer in each direction — if they land on time. On Sunday, the first two American flights into Los Angeles from New York arrived 24 minutes and 85 minutes late, respectively.

Ms. Breyton recalled that opening-day festivities began well before takeoff. “They’d been to a cocktail party before,” she said. “When they got on board, everybody was feeling good at that point.”

Mr. Sandburg, who was 81 when he took the flight, seemed particularly moved. In an article for Ladies’ Home Journal, he rhapsodized:

“You look out of the window at the waves of dark and light clouds looking like ocean shorelines, and you feel as if you are floating away in this pleasantly moving room, like the basket hanging from the balloon you saw with a visiting circus when you were a boy. You remember how the man in the balloon basket wore red and gold tights, and was bright against the sun as he jumped out of the basket, and how a big white umbrella opened up over him, and you heard the other boys holler, ‘That’s the parachute!’ ”

“You have let your mind wander again,” the essay continued, “and you wake up now in this room where you move through rain and come out of it into a clear blue sky with a cloudland below you, and you say to yourself, ‘My, that’s purty to look at.’ ”

Ms. Breyton said that the poet appeared to be well in his cups.

“When I addressed him for something, I could tell that he was a little bit feeling good,” she recalled. “But he was not a young man then, and all things considered, he did all right.”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
A version of this article appeared in print on January 26, 2009, on page A20 of the New York edition.

Facebook Group - Transportation History Committee

2009-01-22T21:51:00.000-05:00

Join the Transportation History Committee Group on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/reqs.phpfriend#/group.php?gid=38869502613