From 1947 to 1956, Mark and Betty Lutz owned Mark's Dairy Bar on this site along the historic Lincoln Highway, and Betty operated the diner while preparing food, serving, washing dishes, socializing with customers, and raising three very young children in the attached home. The diner was a favorite of passing truckers, blue-collar workers, and Minerva High School students, who came for jaw breaker hamburgers, foot-long Coneys, hand-cut french fries, milkshakes, and generous banana splits, played their favorite songs on the old Wurlitzer jukebox, and danced, often with help from Betty's three children. Before McDonald's, Arby's, and Burger King, small diners like this one were part of Americana, and Mark and Betty's diner gave Minerva a place to enjoy that golden era. Directly across the street stood the Minerva Municipal Power and Light Plant, built in 1888 and repeatedly expanded and upgraded until its demolition in the late 60's. When the Lincoln Way Bridge was rebuilt in 1934, the plant supplied steam heat through embedded pipes to keep the surface free of snow and ice, and when the plant occasionally "blew up," as local children said, power and lights went out across the village and the children ran outside to enjoy the excitement of a dark Minerva.