OLD LINCOLN HIGHWAY
Editor’s note: The year 2006 celebrates the 50th anniversary of the federal law that began the USA’s vast Interstate Highway System. This year, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of United States Federal Highways, a motorcade which included Merrill Eisenhower Atwater, Dwight’s great grandson, spent two weeks driving from San Francisco to Washington, DC, on US Hwy 80, which replaced the Lincoln Highway and followed the route of many of the pioneer movements west. While Americans take for granted our nine East-West Interstates, we forget these are as important to our economy and way of life as the rivers and railroads were in past generations. Our highways and bridges are currently undergoing many major improvements and renovations all across the United States at a cost of billions, and plans must project needs of decades from now. This special feature commemorates this history.
Dr. Horatio Nelson Jackson made the first car trip across the United States in 1903, driving from San Francisco to New York in a 20 horse power Winton automobile. His trip, which took 63 days, was nearly a century after Lewis and Clark’s 1805 two-year journey across the country, by boat with portage on foot and horses , seeking waterways to the Pacific. The first cars made in America were built in 1893. Just ten years later, when Horatio Jackson took the dare on a $50 wager and began his automobile drive, people outside of cities had never even seen a car. The general consensus was that autos were idiotic contraptions doomed to failure, and the horse would never be replaced as the best mode of transportation. When Jackson’s Winton car broke down or needed new tires because of the deep ruts in the muddy horse paths, the driver had to depend on the train or stagecoach to get the needed parts to him, sometimes taking up to ten days. Although nearly everyone thought Jackson’s proposed trip was impossible, it grew into a sponsored race by three car companies to prove their vehicle was the best. There were no roads and bridges from east to west in the U.S. then, and rivers had to be forded at lowest points, with the car often sticking in the mud or on the rocks.
In 1900 Harvey Firestone, a carriage salesman, began manufacturing rubber tires, which he first sold for carriages as he established the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company in Akron, OH. In 1919 the first Transcontinental Motor Train across the United States included the young army officer, Dwight D. Eisenhower. This convoy traveled for 62 days covering 3,000 miles on small and perilous, rough, rutted roads and the Lincoln Highway, crushing small bridges as the convoy traveled. During World War I Eisenhower had seen the Autobahns and recognized the need for great highways in America. During The Great Depression many men who couldn’t find employment were hired by the U.S. government aid programs to build roads, lodges, and bridges near natural wonders in North America, especially in National Parks, some of which were newly formed and becoming tourist points of interest accessible only by train during those early years. From 1933 to 1938 thousands of unemployed male youths from virtually every state were put to work as laborers on road gangs to pave the final stretches of Route 66. As a result of this monumental effort, the Chicago-to-Los Angeles highway was reported as “continuously paved” in 1938. After World War II, when Eisenhower was President, he realized his dream of building Naitonal Highways for civilian and military use, and June 29, 1956, he signed legislation to begin the great Interstate Highway Systeim across the United States, allocating $10 billion federal-aid highway program through 1961, in 60-40 matching funds with states, to build 160,000 miles of super highways. This superhighway system was built with the military in mind, to keep the country safe in times of war. It became the backbone for the efficient transport of food and goods, and for the connection of people and industry. Without this highway system, which we take for granted, the USA would have a completely different regional relationship, and travel would be far more difficult. It signifies and provides freedom and is a tribute to the people responsible for building and maintaining it—although some of the changes it brought our nation have been controversial.
I was fascinated to learn recently that my grandfather, who died when I was three, was a travel writer! My mother, at 91 years young, tells this story of a trip across the United States in July 1936 ,as a young college student traveling with her family of five in the family car, for her father’s travel writing research. This was one of the very early tourist trips made by any family across the US, from South Carolina to Los Angeles, traveling some of the first hard surfaced two-lane roads. I have by RV cross-country many times. We know the U.S. highways very well and the difficulties of mountains and deserts even today. We can fully appreciate how arduous and adventuresome the trip would have been in 1936, just after the Great Depression and just before World War II. The story is beyond our modern comprehension!
Real Travel Adventures 