Historic Lincoln Highway

The Lincoln Highway was an idea dreamed up in 1912 by automobile industrialist and promoter Carl Fisher. He foresaw the impact of automobile travel on the country, as well as the favorable impact that good roads would have on the auto industry. His idea was for a graveled road from coast to coast, replacing the rutted dirt tracks that made travel between towns so arduous.

At the time of Fisher's dream, the U. S. Federal government was not interested in constructing national roads. The highway would have to be privately funded. Two other men recognized the benefit that good roads would have on the auto industry; Frank Seiberling of Goodyear and Henry Joy of the Packard Motor Car Company joined Fisher in funding the highway. Henry Ford, however, refused to contribute because he thought that road building should be funded by the public, not by private industry.

Photo by David Monack via wikimedia.org

The first completed section of the Lincoln Highway ran between Newark, New Jersey, and Jersey City, New Jersey. It was dedicate on December 13, 1913.

In 1919, a U.S. Army convoy traveled the Lincoln Highway from Gettysburg to San Francisco. The difficulties they encountered with the young highway helped spotlight the need for improved roads, and support grew for public funding at the local and federal levels. By 1925, the government had begun to turn its attention to roadbuilding and took control from the private sector. The Joint Board on Interstate Highways instituted a numbering system for U.S. highways instead of using road names, and began putting up new road signs at the end of 1926. Rather than assigning one number to the entire Lincoln Highway, the numbering system resulted in the historic road traveling along portions of different numbered highways.

Army photo by US Army, courtesy Mamie Eisenhower Birthplace collection via Ames Public Library

In planning the Lincoln Highway route, the main concern was getting from one end to the other as quickly as possible. It was not a route for sight-seeing; it avoided the twisting roadways of the scenic National Park areas, as well as the traffic bottlenecks in the larger cities. As time passed, parts of the road were realigned as more direct routes were scouted out.

The Lincoln Highway route begins in Times Square in New York City, and passes through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California, to end in San Francisco's Lincoln Park.

Photo is in the public domain

From east to west (although the highway travels on many other small segments), the general route of the Lincoln Highway follows these main numbered routes:

• U.S. 1 south from New York City to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• U.S. 30 west to Granger, Wyoming
• I-80 west to Wendover, Nevada
• U.S. 50 west to just east of Reno, Nevada
• I-80 west to Sacramento, California
• I-5 south to Tracy, California
• I-580 west to Oakland, California
• I-80 west to San Francisco, California

Interstate 80 is the major highway most closely parallel to the Lincoln Highway. For detailed routing and maps, visit the Lincoln Highway Association.

The Lincoln Highway Association was in place from the very beginning in 1913 to plan and promote the highway. When the new federal highway numbering system interrupted the continuity of the Lincoln Highway in 1926, interest in the road declined; the association disbanded at the end of 1927.

In 1992 the Lincoln Highway Association was formed anew as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Its purpose is to preserve and promote the historic highway as a piece of history and as a tourist destination.


Photo by Ammodramus via wikimedia.org