Lincoln Highway

Grantsville was on the first road across America, then off it, then on again. When the Lincoln Highway was routed in 1913 — the country's first coast-to-coast auto road — it came through town. In 1919 the planners chased a straighter line and dropped Grantsville for a shortcut aimed dead across the salt desert. That shortcut, the Goodyear Cutoff, was a disaster: the salt-mud swallowed the grade, washouts opened faster than crews could fill them, and it was never finished. By 1927 the highway gave up and swung back through Grantsville toward Wendover. The mud had won.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Great Salt Lake — 10 mi
  The largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere
• Bingham Canyon Mine — 18 mi
  The largest man-made excavation on Earth
• Saltair — 23 mi
  A haunting lakeside resort with a storied past
• Antelope Island State Park — 29 mi
  A rugged island in the Great Salt Lake with free-roaming bison

More markers nearby

• Adobe Rock — 11 mi
• Tooele's First Cemetery — 11 mi
• Stockton (3) Markers — 12 mi
• Iosepa Town History — 14 mi