Book review: “Greetings from the Lincoln Highway”

When best-selling author Michael Wallis and award-winning photographer Michael Williamson were doing field research for their book, “The Lincoln Highway,” they used Brian Butko‘s 2005 volume, “Greetings from the Lincoln Highway” ($29.95, Stackpole Books, 288 pages), as one of their key references.

Butko even embarked a bit of a mirror book tour when Wallis and Williamson hit the road this summer to promote their volume.

A gracious Butko mailed me a copy of “Greetings from the Lincoln Highway.” It is even more richly detailed and useful for those wishing to travel the 3,300-mile historic road, which predates Route 66 by more than a decade.

Butko’s book definitely has some differences from the Wallis-Williamson book:

• The opening chapter, “The Good, the Bad and the Muddy,” is as good of a historical overview of the Lincoln Highway as I’ve read. Butko obviously scoured libraries, universities and private collections across the country to track down information. Future road historians owe him a debt of gratitude.
• Butko’s book contains maps of each of the 14 states where the Lincoln Highway went, including the various alignments. There also are enlarged maps of larger cities to help LH travelers find their way.
• Butko liberally uses images of vintage postcards and old photos throughout his book. You’ll also see a ticket from San Francisco ferry, matchbooks from long-gone businesses, old maps, road guide ads, pennents, a drive-in movie ticket, menus, commemorative plates, ledger pages and even a rare ashtray from the fabled Ship Hotel, which was destroyed by fire in 2001.
• Also sprinkled in the book are messages from old postcards and journals. Here’s one from the Pathfinder Hotel in Fremont, Neb.: “Dear Mary — I have a very nice room here. Tonight I have a radio and it seems so good. Wish I owned one. … The sky is lovely pink now. It’s 9 P.M. and I have my washing to do — Darn it all. Lots of love — Nancy.”
• Butko’s contemporary images not only include businesses, but also obscure or abandoned alignments of the highway. He even found a cedar pole bridge in Utah that carried an early version of the Lincoln.
• Butko devotes a chapter to Colorado, which had an alternate alignment of the Lincoln Highway to Denver for a time. This leg tends to be ignored.
• Butko’s dense text reads almost like a turn-by-turn narrative and historical overview as one would go from east, at Times Square, to west to San Francisco. It doesn’t seem like much escapes his eye.

Butko’s text isn’t as meaty or rhythmic as Wallis’, nor is his photography as eye-catching as Williamson’s. This is not criticism. Both Wallis and Williamson are near the top of their respective fields. One would expect juicy prose from Wallis and glittering images from Williamson, and they deliver.

But because of its many riches in terms of history accounts, contemporary detail and vintage images, Butko’s “Greetings from the Lincoln Highway” is more than worthwhile on its own terms.

Highly recommended.