The Lincoln Highway

The Lincoln Highway was conceived in 1912 and promoted by American industrialists determined to create one transcontinental highway from existing paths, trails and city streets. Spear-headed by the Lincoln Highway Association, the route was designated in 1914 and stretched from Times Square in New York City to San Francisco, where the 1915 Pan-Pacific exposition was held., There were two Lincoln Highway routes from Reno to Sacramento, and the southern or Pioneer branch follows today's U.S. 50 west from Carson City, around the south shore of Lake Tahoe to Placerville, and on to Sacramento through what today is Rancho Cordova., That route followed a path just north of this monument, today's Folsom Boulevard. The area was known as Mills, and the road was traveled by farm trucks carrying grapes, pears, hops and other produce which grew in the riverside fields to market., In 1918, nearby Mather Air Field opened, and by the 1950s, Aerojet General began building rockets nearby. While Folsom Boulevard remained the backbone corridor of the community, the sight of farm trucks gave way to daily commuters to Aerojet and Mather as Rancho Cordova literally took flight., By 1925, the United States had gone from having one named highway to a confusing system of many and thus a numbering system was born. The Lincoln Highway was broken up into parts of U.S. Highways 1, 30, 530, 40, and 50., By the late 1940s, the memories of the Lincoln Highway started to fade away. A generation of Americans had grown up with paved roads and numbered highways and had never heard of the Lincoln Highway., However, not everyone has forgotten. The Lincoln Highway Association was reactivated in 1992, and remains dedicated to preserving the highway and its fascinating history, celebrated by the Rancho Cordova Heritage Corridor along the original Lincoln Highway route.