The Lincoln Highway, once called the Main Street Across America, began on September 10, 1912, when a group of industrialists led by Carl Fisher envisioned a continuous improved highway from the Atlantic to the Pacific as the nation’s first coast-to-coast auto road, open to lawful traffic without tolls and intended as a living memorial to President Abraham Lincoln. When the route was announced in 1913, it stretched 3,389 miles by linking existing roadbeds, while new sections demonstrated state-of-the-art road construction methods and supporters were urged to join the Lincoln Highway Association. The highway remained a tourist destination from its earliest years and still draws travelers seeking the back roads of America through towns such as New Carlisle, Rolling Prairie, Deep River, and Valparaiso. Today it is a system of existing roadways crossing 13 states for nearly 3,400 miles from Times Square in New York City to Lincoln Park, San Francisco. Its timeline includes the formation of the Lincoln Highway Association in 1913, the completion of the first Seedling Mile west of Malta, Illinois, in 1914, a moving picture of the entire route made in 1915 for the Panama-Pacific Exposition, the 1919 Military Convoy Trip with Lt. Dwight D. Eisenhower, construction of the Ideal Section between Schererville and Dyer, Indiana, in 1922–23, placement of concrete markers across the route by the Boy Scouts of America in 1928, and the re-establishment of the Lincoln Highway Association in 1992 to preserve and promote the road and its heritage. At New Carlisle, a dangerous railroad crossing on the route known as the Death Crossing was replaced by a grade separation with three separate viaducts serving the Chicago, South Bend and Northern Indiana Railway, the Chicago Lake Shore and South Bend Railway, and the New York Central Railroad. To avoid building viaducts at the original angled crossing, the route was changed into a large S shape so the highway could pass under the bridges at right angles to the tracks. The rebuilt stretch measured 1.09 miles, used concrete eight inches deep and twenty feet wide with widening at curves, included heavy grading and a 700-foot retaining wall, and cost about $70,000, with the work done by the Highways Improvement Company of South Bend.