Marshall County came to be known as the Crossroads of America because the Lincoln Highway, the Michigan Road, a later portion of the Dixie Highway, the Grand Army of the Republic Highway (U.S. 6), and the Yellowstone Trail all passed through it. In Indiana, the Lincoln Highway's second alignment, built in the mid-1920s, was settled by 1928 except for its course through Plymouth. City leaders and downtown business owners favored a downtown route over the new Garro Street Bridge, while others backed Jefferson Street, which required a new bridge over the Yellow River. After several meetings, a final crowded session at the high school the night before the deadline ended with Jefferson Street prevailing because a new bridge was the less expensive choice, and the Jefferson Street/Lincoln Highway Bridge was built between 1927 and 1928 specifically for the new alignment. The Lincoln Highway itself began as an idea on September 10, 1912, when industrialists led by Carl G. Fisher envisioned a continuous improved highway from the Atlantic to the Pacific, open to lawful traffic without tolls and serving as a living memorial to Abraham Lincoln. Announced in 1913, the route extended 3,389 miles by linking existing roadbeds, while new sections demonstrated modern concrete road construction. A timeline of the road's development includes the formation of the Lincoln Highway Association in 1913, the completion of the first seedling mile west of Malta, Illinois, in 1914, a 1919 U.S. military convoy that traveled the route with Lt. Dwight D. Eisenhower, construction of the Ideal Section between Schererville and Dyer in 1922-23, the shortening of the route across Indiana in 1926-28 through Plymouth, coast-to-coast concrete markers placed by the Boy Scouts of America in 1928, the 1966 bypass of the 1928 route in Marshall County for the current four-lane U.S. 30, and the reestablishment of the Lincoln Highway Association in 1992. Once called the Main Street across America, the road still survives, crossing 13 states for nearly 3,400 miles from Times Square in New York City to Lincoln Park in San Francisco, and it continues to draw travelers to communities along its route such as New Carlisle, Rolling Prairie, Deep River, Valparaiso, and Plymouth.