YORK COUNTY, Pa. (WHTM) — There was a time when traveling across the country meant a road trip – not a flight – for most people.

And back in the 1940s, that road trip didn’t happen on interstate highways but an older generation of roads like the Lincoln Highway, old U.S. 30 in York (along what is now route 462, parallel to and south of current U.S. 30).

And on Lincoln Highway were places to stay like the Modernaire Motel in Springettsbury Township, which opened in 1949. And people who stayed in those places found those places not by searching online travel sites or even calling a toll-free phone number but thanks to bright neon signs, like the one in front of the Modernaire.

The motel changed hands several times and closed for the last time in 2023, said Tom Davidson, state director of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the Lincoln Highway Association. And this time, the building’s fate seems sealed: a Wawa will replace it.

But the neon sign could end up restored and in York’s Agricultural & Industrial Museum, thanks to work by the highway association and Preservation Pennsylvania and the generosity of donors .

Davidson said the goal is to raise $15,000; people who donate $100 or more will get special gifts. If all goes well, the sign will take its place in the museum alongside another rescued neon sign: that of Lee’s Diner, formerly in West York.

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“Neon is as much an art form as it is advertising,” Davidson said. “It was put along the roadside so people could see as they drove along what was what was up ahead” much as the orange roof of a Howard Johnson’s — which, indeed, is what the Stonybrook Family Restaurant once was — indicated a restaurant was ahead.

“All along here were places that were constructed to gain your attention,” Davidson said. “Whether people saw the orange roof or the mid-century building or the neon sign, they were all built to gain the traveler’s attention along the way.”

But then came interstates and airplanes, and the neon signs became as obsolete as the independent roadside motels they advertised. Not many craftspeople still alive even know how to blow neon glass anymore, Davidson said.

“From the 1920s until about 1970, neon signs were very popular,” he said. “Today, they’re mainly in museums.”

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