The 1928 Lincoln Highway in Indiana

The Lincoln Highway was routed in 1913 to great fanfare. It was among the first roads where motorists could just follow the signs and drive from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It’s hard to overstate how big of a deal this was. Hundreds of other named Auto Trails came to criscross the nation. But vanishingly few held the same lore as the Lincoln Highway. I know of other coast-to-coast highways: the Yellowstone Trail, the National Old Trails Road, and the Pikes Peak Ocean-to-Ocean Highway come to mind, and all of them passed through Indiana. But only roadfans like me remember them today. The Lincoln Highway still has a measurable amount of American mind share, if for no other reason that so many local and county roads that carried this highway still bear its name in some way. Blade sign for Lincolnway West in Mishawaka, Indiana Things moved quickly through the 1910s and 1920s as states and finally the US government got into the highway business. By 1926, when the US highway system came to…