MANNS CHOICE, Pennsylvania — In January of 1941, hundreds of businessmen from communities all along the 7 miles of the Lincoln Highway that stretched from Everett to the top of Tull’s Hill met at the Ford Bedford Inn. They discussed plans for improving a highway that was first paved and modernized in 1919.
Edmund S. Shuck, the president of the Pennsylvania Lincoln Highway Association, warned that the new “streamlined” Pennsylvania Turnpike would cost the state a $200,000 annual loss in business, depreciate property values, and create roughly $10,000,000 in state taxes as tourist spending shifted to the new road.
Officials, including state Senate pro tempore Charles H. Ealy and Assistant Secretary of Highways C.H. Buckius, announced a countermeasure: a $12,000,000 modernization of the Lincoln Highway. In 1941, 7 miles between Everett and Bedford would be improved.
Bedford had long been a lodging and transportation center because of its split on the Forbes and Pennsylvania Road corridor before the route became part of the Lincoln Highway. Now, everything that had kept the small towns along the highway bustling was about to be bypassed thanks to the new Pennsylvania Turnpike, which had opened to traffic in October 1940.
Shuck and the Lincoln Highway boosters weren’t wrong to be scared as the math was laid out to them. The turnpike really did siphon off the long-haul travelers who’d kept every diner, gas station, and tourist cabin between Bedford and Schellsburg bustling for decades.
But somewhere in that same stretch of anxious years, a man named Clyde Crissey Jr. decided that the smart move was to build 12 more cabins anyway. Crissey already owned the Hotel Lincoln along the road just west of Bedford.
The Lincoln Motor Court sits along the historic Lincoln Highway in Manns Choice, Pennsylvania, on May 13, 2026. (Photo by Justin Merriman)
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The Lincoln Motor Court sits along the historic Lincoln Highway in Manns Choice, Pennsylvania, on May 13, 2026. (Photo by Justin Merriman)
Crissey brought in a carpenter, Thomas Mitchell. Together they raised a U-shaped motor court on top of Tull’s Hill, betting that people would still need a place to put their heads down even after the map had changed underneath them.
Crissey and Mitchell weren’t gambling on the turnpike failing. They were betting on the Lincoln Highway refusing to disappear. And they were betting that Bedford County would always have its own gravity and its own reasons for a car to slow down and stay the night.
Some 80 years later, that bet is still paying out in strange and beautiful ways.
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This spring, the Lincoln Motor Court changed hands again. And the family retelling the story is, quite literally, the same family that built it.
Avery Hinson — whose great-great-grandfather was Thomas Mitchell himself — and his partner Kyle Brown took over the 12 cabins. They started in, one at a time, stripping back decades of patchwork fixes to get to the bones of what was there in the beginning: the original hip roofs, the Permastone siding, the tiny porches where honeymooners once sat in metal lawn chairs and watched the traffic climb the hill.
Kyle Brown, co-owner of the Lincoln Motor Court, sits outside the historic roadside motel in Manns Choice, Pennsylvania, on May 13, 2026. (Photo by Justin Merriman)
" data-large-file="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...NCOLN-MOTOR-COURT-02-e1785167462534.jpg?w=696" src="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...NCOLN-MOTOR-COURT-02-e1785167462534.jpg?w=696" alt="Kyle Brown, co-owner of the Lincoln Motor Court, sits outside the historic roadside motel" class="wp-image-4664415" srcset="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/.../07/LINCOLN-MOTOR-COURT-02-e1785167462534.jpg 1024w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...OR-COURT-02-e1785167462534.jpg?resize=300,200 300w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...OR-COURT-02-e1785167462534.jpg?resize=768,512 768w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...OR-COURT-02-e1785167462534.jpg?resize=150,100 150w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...OR-COURT-02-e1785167462534.jpg?resize=696,464 696w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px">
Kyle Brown, co-owner of the Lincoln Motor Court, sits outside the historic roadside motel in Manns Choice, Pennsylvania, on May 13, 2026. (Photo by Justin Merriman)
Brown, covered in dust and up to his elbows in redoing one of the 12 cabins, said that he is literally living the dream. “I have wanted to run a vintage roadside motel his whole life; Avery just wanted to bring his family’s place back to life,” he said.
Of the 12 cabins, nine have been completely restored and are really engineering marvels. Three are in the process of getting new foundations and cabins 11 and 12 will be finished and fully operational by 2027.
Between the two of them, cabin by cabin, they are doing the same thing that Crissey and Mitchell did in 1941: building for a road that everyone else had already written off, and trusting that the people who love it will keep coming anyway.
There was something so quintessentially American about this effort by Brown and Mitchell. There is a small stage in the center of the court where local musicians play on weekends. Last weekend alone, hundreds climbed the old mountain for their Christmas in July event, in which the entire court was draped in festive Christmas lights and decorations. The event supports Bedford County’s nonprofit organizations.
The event lit up the mountain. Visitors and locals danced along the wooden stage. The gravel court was filled with folding chairs. Strangers became fast friends over a shared sense of community and also awe over what these two young men have done to bring back to life the last motor court standing on the 3,389-mile Lincoln Highway, America’s first coast-to-coast highway.
A roadside marker for the Lincoln Highway sits in front of Lincoln Motor Court in Manns Choice, Pennsylvania, on May 13, 2026. (Photo by Justin Merriman)
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A roadside marker for the Lincoln Highway sits in front of Lincoln Motor Court in Manns Choice, Pennsylvania, on May 13, 2026. (Photo by Justin Merriman)
They’ve also put a patio in the center of the court with a fire pit in the center of it. This draws people together on quiet evenings, forming lasting friendships and connectivity desperately needed in a very online society.
When the Pennsylvania Turnpike opened on Oct. 1, 1940, it bypassed 939 cross streets, 12 railroad crossings, and 25 traffic signals that had slowed traffic on U.S. 30. And it cut the drive from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh from nine hours to under three.
Long-distance travelers — exactly the tourist traffic that fed Route 30’s diners, gas stations, and motor courts such as the Lincoln Motor Court — shifted to the new road almost immediately.
On opening weekend, some turnpike-adjacent towns ironically saw a temporary business surge from curious motorists, and businesses feared the opposite before realizing that exit towns could actually gain trade. But that upside was concentrated only at interchange towns.
The lasting damage split Route 30 towns into winners and losers based on one decision: whether they got a turnpike exit.
Bedford and Breezewood secured interchanges and thrived. Breezewood, in particular, grew into the famous “town of motels” built explicitly to catch turnpike traffic forced to stop at its traffic light.
Everett, just up the road, declined an interchange. As old news clippings show, the town was worried about losing its Lincoln Highway trade. The Bedford County Historical Society called the decision a mistake since Everett was effectively cut off and stagnated.
Towns such as McConnellsburg in Fulton County, which had four hotels, two banks, two newspapers, and 25 highway-serving businesses in 1924, shrank to almost nothing once through-traffic vanished.
The very isolation that hurt businesses like the Lincoln Motor Court decades ago is what makes them valuable today. With through-traffic gone, roadside motor courts, the Bedford Coffee Pot, and other mid-century attractions were frozen in time rather than demolished and modernized, as their turnpike-plaza counterparts were.
Signs for the Lincoln Motor Court sit along the Lincoln Highway, directing travelers to the historic roadside motel in Manns Choice, Pennsylvania, on May 13, 2026. Built in the 1940s, the motor court is believed to be the last remaining tourist court still welcoming travelers along America’s first transcontinental highway, which stretches more than 3,000 miles from New York City to San Francisco. Originally built for motorists exploring the country by automobile, the motel still reflects an era when the open road was as much a part of the adventure as the destination itself. (Photo by Justin Merriman)
" data-large-file="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...NCOLN-MOTOR-COURT-01-e1785167394652.jpg?w=696" src="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...NCOLN-MOTOR-COURT-01-e1785167394652.jpg?w=696" alt="Signs for the Lincoln Motor Court sit along the Lincoln Highway" class="wp-image-4664409" srcset="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/.../07/LINCOLN-MOTOR-COURT-01-e1785167394652.jpg 1024w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...OR-COURT-01-e1785167394652.jpg?resize=300,200 300w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...OR-COURT-01-e1785167394652.jpg?resize=768,512 768w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...OR-COURT-01-e1785167394652.jpg?resize=150,100 150w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...OR-COURT-01-e1785167394652.jpg?resize=696,464 696w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px">
Signs for the Lincoln Motor Court sit along the Lincoln Highway, directing travelers to the historic roadside motel in Manns Choice, Pennsylvania, on May 13, 2026. Built in the 1940s, the motor court is believed to be the last remaining tourist court still welcoming travelers along America’s first transcontinental highway, which stretches more than 3,000 miles from New York City to San Francisco. Originally built for motorists exploring the country by automobile, the motel still reflects an era when the open road was as much a part of the adventure as the destination itself. (Photo by Justin Merriman)
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Since the Lincoln Highway Association was revived in the early 1990s and the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor was established, that “frozen in amber” quality has become a heritage-tourism draw.
Now, enthusiasts deliberately leave the turnpike to drive the old two-lane route and stay in places exactly like the Lincoln Motor Court, precisely because it wasn’t swept up in modern development.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
