The Lincoln Highway Experience

The Lincoln Highway is the first transcontinental highway in the U.S., running coast-to-coast from Times Square in New York City to Lincoln Park in San Francisco. It was also the first national memorial to President Abraham Lincoln. Dedicated in 1913 and finished in 1925, the highway was one of the first designed “for automobiles”, with the idea being that a good road would help advance the automobile industry.

 When the US established a numbering system for highways in 1926, most of the Lincoln Highway became U.S. Route 30. In our time in western Pennsylvania, we drove on a number of sections of Route 30, which is is full of historical sights of interest. There have been lots of adjustments to the route over the years, which you can see here if you are so inclined.

The highway brought prosperity to the hundreds of towns along its nearly 3,400 miles, which came to be known as “The Main Street Across America”. If one were to truly attempt to drive across county on it when it first opened, it would probably have taken upwards of a month –– provided your car could handle that kind of abuse and you could actually find a gas station. And where would you spend the night, exactly? And eat? So over time services began to pop up along the way to support the new drivers and their cars, which brought more drivers, which brought more businesses…

Businesses began using gimmicks to attract customers, with things like a Giant Coffee Pot or an Inn in the shape of a riverboat. We saw some of these on our trip, which you can see and read about here. Alas, Americans eventually simply wanted to get where they were going faster, and turnpikes/expressways/parkways began to be built. As drivers began to avoid the Lincoln Highway for travel, great economic distress was imposed on the businesses that had previously relied upon those drivers. With the decline in traffic, many of the unique marketing lures were lost to time.

The Lincoln Highway Experience in Latrobe, Penn., sits right on the Lincoln Highway. Here you can tour exhibits, send off a postcard to a friend or family member (with a postage stamp included in the admission price), and sit inside a restored diner while you are served a slice of pie and coffee (also included). The organization operating the museum also works to keep the Highway alive, adding historical markers along the road, creating maps and itineraries, and raising awareness about preserving the attractions that are left.

The Experience is a fun tribute to the first joyous days of long-distance automobile travel in the United States and perhaps to simpler pleasures that can result from traveling in the slow lanes.

Note: the lovely painting at the top of this page is by Kevin Kutz, who has published a book of his lovely Lincoln Highway paintings and drawings.