Lincoln Highway

This article is about the highway in the United States. For the highway in Australia, see Lincoln Highway, South Australia.
For other uses, see Lincoln Highway (disambiguation).

Lincoln Highway marker
Lincoln Highway
Route information
Length3,389 mi (5,454 km)
Existed1913–present
Major junctions
West endLincoln Park in San Francisco, California
East endTimes Square in New York, New York
Location
CountryUnited States
StatesCalifornia, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York
Highway system
Lincoln Theater in Cheyenne, Wyoming, on US 30, the Lincoln Highway

The Lincoln Highway is one of the first transcontinental highways in the United States and one of the first highways designed expressly for automobiles.[1][2] Conceived in 1912 by Indiana entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher, and formally dedicated October 31, 1913, the Lincoln Highway runs coast-to-coast from Times Square in New York City west to Lincoln Park in San Francisco. The full route originally ran through 13 states: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California. In 1915, the "Colorado Loop" was removed, and in 1928, a realignment routed the Lincoln Highway through the northern tip of West Virginia. Thus, there are 14 states, 128 counties, and more than 700 cities, towns, and villages through which the highway passed at some time in its history.

The first officially recorded length of the entire Lincoln Highway in 1913 was 3,389 miles (5,454 km).[a] Over the years, the road was improved and numerous realignments were made,[4] and by 1924 the highway had been shortened to 3,142 miles (5,057 km). Counting the original route and all of the subsequent realignments, there has been a grand total of 5,872 miles (9,450 km).[5]

The Lincoln Highway was gradually replaced with numbered designations after the establishment of the U.S. Numbered Highway System in 1926, with most of the route becoming U.S. Route 30 from Pennsylvania to Wyoming. After the Interstate Highway System was formed in the 1950s, the former alignments of the Lincoln Highway were largely superseded by Interstate 80 as the primary coast-to-coast route from the New York City area to San Francisco.

  1. ^ Weingroff, Richard F. (April 7, 2011). "The Lincoln Highway". Highway History. Federal Highway Administration. Retrieved December 2, 2011.
  2. ^ "America's First Transcontinental Highway Turns 100". NPR.org. Retrieved December 15, 2022.
  3. ^ * Butko, Brian (2005). Greetings from the Lincoln Highway: America's First Coast-to-Coast Road (1st ed.). Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books. p. 24. ISBN 978-0-8117-0128-0..
  4. ^ Davies, Pete (2002). American Road: The Story of an Epic Transcontinental Journey at the Dawn of the Motor Age. Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 978-0805068832. See throughout, but especially index entry "Lincoln Highway route controversy".
  5. ^ Calculated by the Lincoln Highway Association National Mapping Committee chaired by Paul Gilger, 2007[full citation needed]


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