Tenth and Lincoln

I suppose we've just seen history made, with the replacement of the stop sign at Tenth and Lincoln by a traffic light. As the sign has been telling us for a couple of months now, it went active March 18, 2010.



It was a bit difficult to get used to at first. Not long ago I saw a driver up ahead of me stop at the red light, look both ways, and then proceed to make a left turn through the red light. Not that I'm blaming him or her; for a few weeks after the light was installed, I had to make a conscious effort not to do the same thing myself.


(Click on image to enlarge)
No, I don't have a tripod. It's more fun this way.

I don't know when the stop sign was first installed at that intersection. A newspaper account of a bad accident that happened there on October 15, 1927, did not say anything about which car ran the stop sign, leading me to believe that there was no stop sign.

It was about 7:30 in the morning on that Saturday. Robert Wood, Fred Grazow and Gust Chase, in a Ford touring car, were heading eastbound to the Gruel farm to do some concrete work. At Tenth and Lincoln their car slammed broadside into a Flint touring car driven by Bernell Humes.

Neighbors around the intersection reported hearing a terrific crash. They came to investigate and found the mangled cars, and Gust Chase badly injured and unconscious. They called for ambulances.

In those days, the undertakers operated the ambulances, which sounds to me like a conflict of interest. In this case the ambulances from the Wild and Pflughoeft funeral homes responded.

Gust was taken to Mercy Hospital. He died there at about 10:45 a.m. without regaining consciousness.

Gust had grown up on the family farm southeast of Ainsworth, and later moved to Hobart. He was born April 14, 1871, one of eight children born to Edward P. and Mary Ann (Tuthill) Chase. On August 28, 1899 he married Emma Breitsprecher of Hobart. They had four children: Edith, Edna, Raymond and George.


Sources:
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ "Gust Chase Killed In Auto Accident Early Saturday Morning." Hobart News 20 Oct. 1927.