Coming from northern Ohio, getting on the PA Turnpike at the PA/OH line was an adventure: divided highway, almost no speed limits, and tunnels through mountains! It might have taken most of a day, but after traveling the rough the mountains of PA, we came out at an Eastern terminus, where our travels eastward would turn in a mighty geographic right turn toward the South land. I don’t recall the highway designation, but it was a broad surface highway at the time, “Highway to the Sun” they called it; and the long awaited turning point was the Breezewood exit.
No one around now probably can imagine what it was like, after hours of slogging through the snowy mountains of PA, to reach this key landmark. We would get off the road, have a meal at one of the many restaurants (I recall the “Wildwood Inn”), and marvel at the souvenirs and ephemera for sale, signaling that we were about to head to a new world, the Southland! No freeways then, just a federal highway from Breezewood all the way down the coast to Florida.
No doubt today, Breezewood has become only more of what it was then. But what it was then meant so much more than what it could possibly mean today,
Outstanding recollection! I remember as a kid our entering the PA Turnpike at Breezewood from Virginia and then clear sailing until our exit from the Ohio Turnpike hours later with a stop at Howard Johnson’s along the way. Souvenir shops, postcards at the `toll plazas’ in between east & westbound lanes, playing `auto bingo’ card games, the whole bit.
It was a different time.