The Lincoln Highway Bridge Rails

The first Lincoln Highway bridge rails ever built on the nation’s first transcontinental highway were created in 1914 when contractor A.F. Neidt, while building a new culvert about 0.9 miles east of here in Washoe County, took it upon himself to mark a section of the Abraham Lincoln Highway, which ran from Times Square in New York to Lincoln Park in San Francisco from 1913 to 1927. Communities across the country competed to attract the “Main Street of America,” and Washoe County had faced criticism for not marking its part of the route. H.E. Frederickson, consul-at-large of the Lincoln Highway Association, was so impressed by these distinctive rails that he proposed the design for Lincoln Highway bridges nationwide, but only one other set was ever built, at Tama, Iowa, in 1915. After the numbered highway system replaced named highways, this route became U.S. 40 and was eventually realigned, and in the early 1970s, when Interstate 80 replaced U.S. 40, the Nevada Department of Transportation salvaged the old rails from the long-abandoned Lincoln Highway.

Mogul, Nevada · United States