Sunday rides. Summer vacations. First dates. College road trips. Nothing blasts Americans back to the past like the classic cars we grew up with!

The Friends of the Park invite you to join us for National Treasures 2010: An Evening with the Coker Classic Car Collection on Thursday, August 19 from 5:30 until 8:30 PM at the Coker Tire Company Museum on Chattanooga's Southside. Dress: Summer casual. Attitude: Let's have some fun for a great cause, because National Treasures 2010 will celebrate the passion we Americans feel for our National Parks and for the vehicles that have traditionally taken us on the road to explore them!

Could there be any better place to celebrate America's parks and its cars than the private Coker Tire Company Museum? A world class but hidden treasure to most of us, this Southside gem will host us for a rare opportunity to ogle up close a truly fabulous collection of classic cars, trucks, motorcycles and bicycles. All the while, we’ll be sampling fun road food, sipping summer beverages, grooving to great cruising music, and taking spins in Coker Tire Company’s vintage, open-air national park tour bus.

(There's even a rumor that 'Teddy Roosevelt' himself will make an appearance and put in a good word for the National Park System he helped formalize. We're sure TR will appreciate the fact that National Treasures falls on the 120th anniversary of the 1890 date when his predecessor, President Benjamin Harrison, signed the federal law that created Chickamauga & Chattanooga as America's first national military park and its first national historical park!)

National Treasures benefits the 501(c)(3) operations of Friends of the Park. The event generates vital income for us and highlights the significance and needs of our region’s grand historic national treasure.

Tickets are $75 each or $130 per couple. It's easy to reserve. Please use this link, where you can make your secure credit card ticket purchase OR send your check, made payable to Friends of the Park, to P.O. Box 748, Chattanooga, TN 37401. Remember to include your name and phone number or email address. The deadline for reserving your tickets is August 12th.

No tickets will be mailed. The names of your party will be on a reservation list at the check-in station for the event on August 19 when you arrive at the Coker Museum, located at Fort Street and West 13th Street in Chattanooga. Parking is plentiful and free. Your ticket price will cover all food, beverages and fun for the evening, including a tax deductible donation to the Friends for which you'll receive written documentation after the event. Guests will be eligible for an array of cool road-themed door prizes when they participate in a light-hearted road map challenge created by Park volunteers to highlight the fascinating stories of the Coker treasures and corresponding stories that can be discovered at our region's national park.

More than a century of time, weather and even thoughtless human vandalism have damaged many of the historic monuments, houses and beautiful natural landscapes that grace our National Park units at Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain, Missionary Ridge, Orchard Knob and Signal Point. These features and places are not just decorative. They commemorate and enable us to better understand important Civil War stories of conflict and reconciliation that must never be forgotten.

Restoration and protection are major focus areas for Friends of the Park right now. Equally important is support for enhanced education outreach, so that we can help build new generations of Park lovers who will care for Chickamauga & Chattanooga tomorrow as we care for it today.

The Friends of the Park can’t achieve these important goals for the Park without your help. We need you to support National Treasures 2010. You'll experience an unforgettable evening and you'll be making an important investment in keeping America's past alive for the future. Please be our guests!