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PO Box 3201
Martinsville, VA 24115
United States

Stephen H. Provost is an author of paranormal adventures and historical non-fiction. “Memortality” is his debut novel on Pace Press, set for release Feb. 1, 2017.

An editor and columnist with more than 30 years of experience as a journalist, he has written on subjects as diverse as history, religion, politics and language and has served as an editor for fiction and non-fiction projects. His book “Fresno Growing Up,” a history of Fresno, California, during the postwar years, is available on Craven Street Books. His next non-fiction work, “Highway 99: The History of California’s Main Street,” is scheduled for release in June.

For the past two years, the editor has served as managing editor for an award-winning weekly, The Cambrian, and is also a columnist for The Tribune in San Luis Obispo.

He lives on the California coast with his wife, stepson and cats Tyrion Fluffybutt and Allie Twinkletail.

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HIGHWAYS

REGIONAL SPOTLIGHT
HIGHWAYS OF THE WEST

Highways of the West spotlights significant highways in California, Nevada, and elsewhere in the West. Designed as user-friendly historical travelogues, these volumes tell the story of how motorists past and present traveled - and travel - roads such as the Lincoln Highway, Victory Highway, and America's Loneliest Road. Illustrated with hundreds of vintage and contemporary photos, the books in this series contain insights into who we are and how we have changed across the decades as we've traveled the Highways of the West.

America’s Loneliest Road

  • U.S. Highway 50 in Nevada has been called America's loneliest road. There are other lonesome stretches of highway, but the band of asphalt from the Utah state line to Lake Tahoe is more than worthy of the title. For vast distances, the old Lincoln Highway extends toward the horizon in an unbroken line, attended only by sagebrush, all-but-deserted mining towns, and empty spaces. You'll visit places like the McGill Drug Store, the International Hotel in Austin, and the Hotel Nevada in Ely. You'll rediscover abandoned pavement, and you'll explore ghost towns like Hamilton and Lane City as you trace this desolate road and its evolution from the late 19th century to today.

    Paperback $19.95

    Hardcover $24.95

    Available on Amazon and at independent bookstores
    and museums across Northern Nevada

The Lincoln Highway in California

  • The Lincoln Highway in California wasn't just one road. It crossed the Sierra in two branches. And its earliest alignment, in 1913, took it south from Sacramento through Stockton to Hayward via the Altamont Pass. But that changed when the Yolo Causeway and Carquinez Bridge were built. Produced in conjunction with the Lincoln Highway Association of California, this volume will take you on a historical travelogue that features the beauty of Lake Tahoe, Donner Pass, Truckee, and Auburn; the history of places like Dutch Flat and California's capital; and the farms and fields of the Sacramento Valley on the way to San Francisco and the highway's Western Terminus.

    COMING SOON

  • Victory Road, the story of the Victory Highway and U.S. 40 in Nevada and the West.

  • U.S. 395, the Eastern Sierra highway.

  • U.S. 95, Nevada’s north-south main street.

CALIFORNIA’s Historic Highways

Many books have been written tracing the course of iconic Route 66 across America’s heartland, but few pages have been dedicated to the “Main Street of California,” which connected towns all up and down the West Coast as the automotive era eclipsed the golden age of rail travel. Highway 99: The History of California’s Main Street is designed to be the most comprehensive book on the highway’s history in print. Similar in tone and approach to Fresno Growing Up, it comprises two sections: the first, longer portion is organized according to topic and includes chapters focusing on various aspects of the road’s development and history. The second is a tour of the old highway, from Calexico at the Mexican border all the way up to Yreka, with a brief look at each of the communities along the way.

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HIGHWAY 99:
the history of California’s Main Street

Highway 99 is written for highway hunter searching for pieces of the road’s history as well as for readers who enjoy tales of what happened the route known as the Golden State Highway. There’s the story of the Richfield Beacon gas stations, an ambitious attempt to create a network that would not only serve motorists at regular intervals but would also light the way for airline pilots flying up and down the Pacific coast at night. There’s a look at roadside refreshments, served up at places like the Mammoth and Giant Orange stands, Pollard’s Chicken Kitchen in Stockton and Livingston’s Blueberry Hill Café. Among them: a place called Tip’s where James Dean reportedly ate his last meal on the day of his fatal crash. Readers will learn about the ghost of Griffith Park and the man who started the Hollywood movie scene, who built a zoo alongside the old highway that almost became Disneyland forty years before Disneyland opened its gates. They’ll also find out about the woman who took matters into her own hands to create the West Coast’s first center stripe.

HIGHWAY 101:
the history of el camino real

Highway 101 was built on the trail pioneered by the Spanish friars and marked by mission bells on the roadside. Illustrated throughout with historic photographs, Highway 101: The History of El Camino Real tells the picturesque story of this great highway and the restaurants, motels, gas stations, and roadside attractions that made it memorable to generations of travelers. From Disneyland to the historic Madonna Inn to the Avenue of the Giants, Highway 101 catalogs the great landmarks along the road, plus the fascinating personalities, from Dorothea Lange to Jelly Roll Morton to Cecil B. DeMille, whose lives intersected with the history of the route. A colorful history of Americana, commerce, travel, and fun, Highway 101 captures the magic of the open road.

Highway 99 is available on Amazon.

Highway 101 is available on Amazon.

Our highways are a microcosm of American life itself, and nowhere is that truer than in the South. You’ll find things here you won’t find anywhere else. You’ll find a host of roadside traditions that started out in the South and spread nationwide, from Chick-fil-A to Cracker Barrel, from KFC to Krispy Kreme. 

No matter where you live, you owe more to the South than you probably realize. It’s given us fried chicken and barbecue, NASCAR and Mayberry. It’s a region rich in history and tradition, steeped in pride and tainted by prejudice. To travel the Highways of the South is to travel through a time capsule, past ’30s diners, motels from the ’40s, drive-ins from the ’50s, and the billboards of today.

You’ll pass dinosaurs and giant chickens, Waffle Houses and Muffler men. You can even sleep in a wigwam or see seven states from Lookout Mountain — or so they say.

Illustrated with 400 historic and contemporary images, Volume III of America’s Historic Highways takes you on a trip along the highways to discover it all.  Experience the legends and legacies that lie along these iconic roads.

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YESTERDAY’S HIGHWAYS:
THE GREAT AMERICAN ROAD TRIP

Relive the history of the American highway from its origins in the era of the covered wagon through the age of the interstate. Illustrated with more than 400 images from roads across the country, “Yesterday’s Highways” takes you back to the golden age of the open road. You’ll visit the diners, motels, filling stations and quirky roadside haunts of yesteryear. From White Castle to Howard Johnson’s, learn about how the American road served up burgers and coffee and blue-plate specials to weary truckers and vacationing families. Journey back to the age of auto camps and revisit the time when mom-and-pop motel courts ruled the side of the road. Before the advent of off-ramps and car-pool lanes, highways zigzagged through downtowns, turning at stop signs and following rail lines. Cars chugged along at 15 mph over gravel roads and narrow, concrete ribbons with dozens of hairpin turns. Drivers were treated to barn ads and billboards and Burma-Shave signs. The Lincoln Highway. Route 66. Highway 99. El Camino Real. The Great Valley Road. Travel back in time and experience what made these roads and so many others the lifeblood of the American experience.

AMERICA’S FIRST HIGHWAYS:
AUTO TRAILS AND THE QUEST FOR GOOD ROADS

Before Route 66 and Highway 99, before the first federal highway system, there was a time when Americans traveled privately funded, barely paved highways from coast to coast or the Great Lakes to the Gulf. America’s First Highways transports you back to an era when America’s roads were new. With the federal government unwilling to spend much on public roads, dreamers like Carl Fisher, who built the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, took the lead. Fisher created the Lincoln Highway and the Dixie Highway, two of the most prominent and successful auto trails. For a brief period, from about 1912 to 1926, these auto trails stitched the country together. They did so by connecting fragments of road that were sometimes paved, many times not; sometimes direct, but more often circuitous routes that made little sense. Marked with distinctive lettering by symbols painted on telephone poles, the sometimes converged and often overlapped. Revisit the Jefferson Highway, the Jackson Highway, the Lee Highway, the Pacific Highway, the Park-to-Park Highway and many more. Learn about the men and women who built them, the auto camps that lined them and the cars that drove them. It’s all here, from Henry Ford to the Hupmobile, from the Stanley Steamer to the Great Race.

If you're on Facebook, join more than other highway enthusiasts in my groups
Lincoln Highway: Nevada and Highways of the West.