Lens4anEye

There are the Scenes Along the Highway and then the Highway Itself by Robert Carlson    [ Lens4anEye ]   Some highways are suited to 70 and 80 mph speeds without much fuss or bother. They are straight and flat with few other travelers nearby. One can floor the gas pedal and nearly fly along watching only the road ahead and for anything which might enter your path of travel. Click here for the full Scenes Along the Highway Album. click for larger image   The miles are both long and short. Long as in many of them and short as in each one passes in 45    to 50 seconds. The landscape is beautiful even if monotonous. Those mountains in the distance don’t change much from one hour to the next. Your peripheral views remain pretty much the same too.  click for larger image   Then suddenly there IS something. A sun bleached abode with missing planks. A horse standing in a wire fenced dirt patch. A rusty pickup truck surrounded by bald tires strewn about. You hit the brakes skidding to a stop

Johnson Farm House, Frostburg, Maryland by Robert Carlson [ Lens4anEye ]   This is one of my earliest encounters with the Johnson Farm House. It had been sitting vacant for a couple of decades when I drove past it in about 1990.  The highway is US 40, also named as The National Road and extends all the way across the country to the west coast.   The location was on my route between Baltimore and Pittsburgh. That was a trip I would make 3 or 4 times a year to visit family and friend. Most of those trips were in conjunction with holidays; July 4, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Mothers and Fathers day. Interstate Highway 68 parallels the US 40 road and the house could be seen if anyone bothered to look to the side as they sped by.     Each time I reached the location just west of Frostburg, I would stop for another set of photographs which recorded the slow-motion slide toward oblivion for this once great house.     

Photography by Robert Carlson Listed on ClickaSnap.com as Profile Lens4anEye I like to start a project and follow it to wherever it takes me. Many times that means packing the car for a 2 or 3 day long trip and heading out on the generalized path I have chosen. One time it was to follow the Ohio river from Pittsburgh at one end and go to the other at Cairo, In.  This blog post covers parts of the national road known as William Penn Highway which extends from New York City to Cincinnati crossing New Jersey and Pennsylvania.  Most of the early course has been bypassed, with some segments several times. These photographs document the history of the road from Old to New to US 22 to various Interstate designations.  Photo Selection from the William Penn highway Album During the National Highway building program of the 1920s, Pennsylvania build thousands of culverts and bridges to facilitate the roadway. These structures were identified with a brass plaque such as this one.  This one has bee