The Lincoln Highway

The Lincoln Highway was the first “Coast to Coast” transcontinental highway in the United States constructed from 1913 to 1928 beginning at Times Square in New York City and ending in Lincoln Park in San Francisco. The route spanned almost 3,400 miles passing through 13 states New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and California. The 1928 re-alignment brought the path through the northern tip of West Virginia. The Lincoln Highway is one of America’s best known roads inspired by the “Good Roads Movement” and affectionately known as “The Main Street America”. , , , “Lincoln is far and away the greatest and most American of Americans. He represented the whole people, the commons. Therefore the most suitable monument to him would be some work intimately to be used and enjoyed by the largest number of people. Nothing would better fill the requirement than a road, a broad highway from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The Lincoln Highway is original. It breathes the twentieth century. It is an inspiration. In centuries to come it would be adorned, as was the Appian way, with landmarks, statuary, homes, inns, a vast chain of splendid marks of man. It would be the path of progress, the river course of humanity, part of the golden girdle of the earth. It would liberate the farmer from the shackles of bad roads, as the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves.” , , Dr. Frank Crane, 1914