America's Main Street: The Lincoln Highway

World's largest truck stop, Walcott, Iowa

It's hard to feel you have left the northeast until you cross the Mississippi. I pushed hard on I-94 and I-80 to break free of Chicago and then settled into the rolling pace of US Route 30, the "Lincoln Highway." Small towns, diners, gun shops, junkyards where cars from the thirties lay unaffected by salt and corrosion and began to entertain me.

Conceived of in 1912 and formally dedicated October 31, 1913, the Lincoln Highway is America's first "National Road." Although it was not completely paved until 1938, it spans coast-to-coast from Times Square in New York City to Lincoln Park in San Francisco. In many areas it runs parallel to the Union Pacific Railroad which preceded it and Interstate 80 which supplanted it as a major commercial artery. As the first automobile road across the country, the Lincoln Highway brought great prosperity to hundreds of cities, towns and villages along the way. It became affectionately known as "The Main Street Across America."

Most of the Lincoln Highway became US Route 30 in 1929 when the government established the federal highway numbering system. Since that time, many sections of the road have been re-aligned with bypasses and improvements. Today's Lincoln Highway aligns with less that 25% of the original 1913-1928 route. There are a total of 14 states, 128 counties, and over 700 cities, towns and villages through which the highway passes at some time in its history.

Main St., North Platte, Nebraska

The old and the new...both air conditioned

Auto recycling, Gibbon, Nebraska

Home of a large Rottweiler

Carburetors, starters and generators repaired here in Kearney, Nebraska

Train after train loaded with western coal moving east on the Union Pacific

Mom's Kitchen, Elm Creek, Nebraska, "Home of the 'Buffs'"

This food is really fast enough

 

Prairie Theater, Ogallala, Nebraska

Spruce St. Station, Ogallala, Nebraska