The Lincoln Highway

Just north of the four-lane Highway 30, on the Old Lincoln Highway going into Marshalltown, Iowa and nestled in a large grove of bur oak trees sets Shady Oaks RV Park and The Big Treehouse. This is home for the summer.

The Lincoln Highway started in 1912 as a coast-to-coast rock highway - a graveled road from New York City to San Francisco -- to be finished for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition. The highway was the dream of Carl Fischer, the man responsible for the Indianapolis Speedway and the man who turned a swamp in Florida into Miami Beach. Henry Joy, President of the Packard Motor Car Company came up with the idea to name the roadway as a memorial to Abraham Lincoln.

The plan provided that the road would be completed by the communities along the route. The communities would provide the equipment and labor and for their efforts would receive free materials. To raise funds for the road, donations were solicited from auto manufacturers and companies providing automative-related products. The public could join the association for $5. And the Lincoln Highway Association came to be with Henry Joy as President and Carl Fischer as Vice President.

On July 1, 1913 the coast-to-coast highway was officially named the Lincoln Highway. It spanned nearly 34,ooo miles from Times Square in New York City to Lincoln Park in San Francisco. I will not go into the politics of which towns and states were either included or excluded on the route, but as the first road across the US, it was "Main Street Across America."

As roadways were improving and increasing there appeared no logical plan for naming or numbering the roadways other than a series of colored bands painted on utility poles. By 1925 numbers were being used and the named highways were starting to loose 'character.' The Lincoln Highway Association was also in decline. But prior to going out of existence, on September 1, 1928 thousands of Boy Scouts from the communities along the highway installed small concrete markers with an imbedded medallion showing the bust of Lincoln and the inscription, "This highway dedicated to Abraham Lincoln."

In 1992 the Lincoln Highway Association reactivated dedicated to preserving the highway and promoting events along the route. http://www.lincolnhighwayassoc.org/