The Lincoln Memorial Highway

The highway began as one man's pitch. At a dinner with industry friends in Indianapolis on September 10, 1912, Carl G. Fisher called for a coast-to-coast rock highway, put its cost at about $10 million and urged, "Let's build it before we're too old to enjoy it." Names such as the Coast-to-Coast Rock Highway and the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway were weighed before Fisher and his associates chose one of his heroes, Abraham Lincoln. Henry Joy was made the association's president so it would not look like Fisher's one-man crusade, and the route was dedicated on October 31, 1913.

What the plaque says

The Lincoln Memorial Highway The Lincoln Highway Association, formed in 1913 to build a New York-to-San Francisco highway, sold "highway memberships" to raise funds for the project. In Nebraska the road, which traversed twelve states, extended westward from Iowa along the Platte Valley route earlier used by emigrants, and followed the mainline Union Pacific Railroad into Wyoming. The section of highway east of Grand Island was started in December, 1914, and an experimental paved mile was completed in 1915. Here, near the center of the transcontinental route, work began quickly because of strong public sponsorship. As the road was built, it was marked by red, white, and blue banded utility posts, three to a mile. In 1928 three thousand concrete markers were erected, each bearing a bronze medallion of the head of Abraham Lincoln. Completed in 1927, the Lincoln Highway, the proto- type transcontinental route designed for automobile traffic, stimulated highway improvement. It later became federally marked U.S. Highway 30. In the 1950-1960s Interstate 80 was built to carry east- west traffic through Nebraska. Though I-80 parallels the Lincoln Highway route in many counties, the older route continues as a part of the federal highway network. Hall County Historical Society Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer — 3.2 mi
  Edward Durell Stone's island pavilion in Grand Island and an 1890s railroad town of moved buildings, among them the cottage where Henry Fonda was born in 1905.

More markers nearby

• Pioneer Park — steps away
• Old Dodge School - World War II POW Branch Camp — 0.2 mi
• Hall County Courthouse — 0.3 mi
• The Seedling Mile — 1.3 mi