Here are two fun, random slide scans for you! Starting with this 1969 photo of several cars preparing to experience an incredible gravitational anomaly known as MAGNETIC HILL! There are a number of Magnetic Hills around the world, and I wasn't sure which one was pictured here.
The closest car's purple license plate might be a clue. Illinois! But I could find no Magnetic Hill in the Land of Lincoln.
Luckily, it didn't take too long to discover that it is located in New Brunswick, Canada (waaaay to the east, just north of Maine). The Magnetic Hill is a Canadian gravity hill, a type of optical illusion created by rising and descending terrain. It is located at the northwestern edge of the city of Moncton in the Canadian province of New Brunswick. The general area is at the base of a ridge named "Lutes Mountain", which rises several hundred feet above the surrounding Petitcodiac River valley.
There are many vintage postcards featuring the Magnetic Hill, I included three. It should be enough!
Next is this picturesque view of a street (dated "November 22, 1970"). But which street? Luckily this one had "Thames Street" written on the cardboard mount. After a brief search, which included looking up "Burke's", I discovered that this is Newport, Rhode Island.
There was an online list of businesses along Thames Street that included a mention of Burke's, which was mighty helpful.
It appears that a block or two or buildings was torn down at some point, resulting in that nice green park to the right. Or perhaps I am mistaken? I don't think so, but perhaps one of you Junior Gorillas will come up with another explanation.
I'm still away from home, but as always there will be new posts for you every day. I'll talk to you soon!
Major-
ReplyDeleteI wonder if Magnetic Springs bottled water is any relation to Magnetic Hill-? I see there were two locations for these magnetic springs: Saginaw, Michigan and Hollywood, California - "From the hills of Hollywood"-! I'm well-acquainted with the Hollywood variety, as it seemed to populate MGM Studios in the late 1960's and early 70's. (And can be spied [on set] in some Hollywood films...) I can say from personal experience, it's the worst bottled water I ever tasted, perhaps due to the fact they failed to remove the "magnets" prior to bottling it.
Thanks, Major.
I wonder if the principles behind "Magnetic Hill" is the same as the Haunted Shack at Knott's or in the town of Calico? After all, the hosts used to demonstrate with billiard balls running "up" a slanted pool table.
ReplyDeleteNewport looks like a nice quaint little town. I hope they didn't tear down any of those buildings, even if it was for a park.
Thanks, Major!
Sooo, I'm guessing that, when traveling along the "Magnetic Hill" road, you get to what appears to be the bottom of the hill, except it really isn't the bottom, it just looks that way because of the tilting, slanting landscape. When you turn off your car's engine, it looks like you're rolling uphill, but you're really continuing to roll downhill. Is that what this is about?
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised Walter Knott didn't dig up this whole area and plop it into Knott's Berry Farm right next to the Haunted Shack!
Newport, RI: I can't tell if the current Street View pic is the same location as the 1970 pic. Same street, but same location along that street? If so, it looks like another big example of TRE! I hope those quaint and wonderful buildings from the 1970 pic are still there.
Nanook, the best way to tell if Magnetic Springs water is from the Magnetic Hill area is to: 1) Set the bottle of water on a table. 2) remove the cap from the bottle. 3) See if the water starts flowing out of the top of the bottle.
I see Tokyo! had the same notion as me regarding the Magnetic Hill.
Wow, we traveled all the way to New Brunswick, Canada on this Anything Goes Saturday! Thank you, Major.
We almost visited this Magnetic Hill in 1978. We were on a family trip across southeastern Canada, crossing the DMZ at Niagara Falls and heading east through Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec City on out onto the Gaspe Peninsula. I remember some guy we met at a campground coming over to the motor home one evening and sitting down with my parents and a bunch of maps to make some suggestions of where to go next.
ReplyDeleteHe recommended we head south into the Maritime Provinces and New England before turning west through New York and back to my grandparents’ homes in NW Ohio. He said there wasn’t a whole lot to do heading eastward into Gaspe, just a lot of open country, and tallied off a list of things to see on his recommended route. One of those things he talked about that sticks in my mind was Magnetic Hill.
My folks seriously considered his proposal, but ultimately drove eastward another day into Gaspe to find that the guy was right about the area. They then pivoted, but instead of driving south we went west to Ottawa, then continued westward, crossing back into the Land of Green and Black Money at Sault St Marie. We then drove across Michigan stopping at Mackinac Island for fudge and Battle Creek to get our free box of fresh Kellogg’s Corn Flakes before completing the mission in Ohio.
Thanks for finally letting me see what it was all about.
The modern photo of Newport accurately shows the same location as the 1970 photo. On July 5th, 1970, a fire started in the upper floors of Walsh Brothers Furniture, whose sign you can see two doors down from Burke’s shoe store. The fire spread rapidly before anyone noticed the smoke from the street and eventually consumed most of the block before it could be contained. Most of the buildings collapsed into their basements, destroying what evidence might have remained to determine the cause of the blaze.
This left a huge, unsightly crater along Thames Street. Fortunately, the area wasn’t condemned to urban blight. It was redeveloped in the mid-to-late ‘70s by philanthropist Doris Duke and the Newport Restoration Foundation into Queen Anne Square.
Thanks, Major. Happy National Eat a Peach Day!
Whoops - the Canada trip was in late May of 1980. I remember it being rather cool thanks to all the ash from the Mountain St Helens eruption. Sorry about the typo.
ReplyDeleteMagnetic Hill, Magnetic Water, for some reason I’m reminded of the Pluto Springs in West Baden. Drink that Pluto water because “When Nature Won’t, Pluto Will!” Illustrated with a Little devil (cousin of the one on the deviled ham label).
ReplyDeleteNewport is a pretty little town. I remember walking the boulevard there and seeing all kinds of familiar looking buildings, even though I had never been downtown there before. Turns out many were designed by famous architects and populated one of my books on American architecture and so were familiar from study.
Thanks for these random pics, Major. Enjoy your family time?
JG
I am full of typos today. Rereading what I wrote again, the fire was on July 5th, 1973, not 1970. If it had happened in 1970, there would have been no way to photograph the block on November 22nd, 1970.
ReplyDeleteAnd JG reminded me that I forgot to wish you a great weekend with family. Forgetting a lot of things today. Which explains how I managed to blow up my multimeter a few minutes ago.
Wow, Maj, you're a regular Paul Drake!
ReplyDeleteI've always thought we stopped in Newport on the way to Cape Cod in the mid 80's, but looking at the map it doesn't seem likely we would have made that kind of detour, and I'm probably remembering some other picturesque Rhode Island town.
Chuck, thanks for all that info (typos and all). Sad about the fire that destroyed all those old buildings, but at least it ended well, not just TREd.
ReplyDeleteI went looking for the pictures from that Cape Cod trip today, but all I could find were a postcard and one snapshot from Plimouth Plantation. And the snapshot is of a pigpen. Sic transit gloria mundi.
ReplyDelete