Remembering the Yellowstone Trail

While following the Lincoln Highway in Starke County, Indiana, recently, the briefest of detours let me see a remnant of another coast-to-coast Auto Trail, the Yellowstone Trail. The Yellowstone Trail connected Plymouth, Massachusetts, to Seattle, Washington. It got its name because it ran right past Yellowstone National Park. This road was established in 1912, predating the more famous Lincoln Highway by a year. However, the road was not routed west from Chicago until 1916. Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, June 18, 1916 In many states through which it passed, the Yellowstone Trail saw state and US highways routed onto it. But not in Indiana. I did some looking at state highway maps from the 1920s and comparing them to Yellowstone Trail maps available at the Yellowstone Trail Association’s site. I also did some research in old newspapers to see if the state let contracts to pave portions of the Yellowstone Trail as state highways. I found some newspaper articles reporting that the state…