Conceived in 1912 by American industrialists seeking a single transcontinental highway from existing paths, trails, and city streets, the Lincoln Highway was promoted by the Lincoln Highway Association, designated in 1914, and extended from Times Square in New York City to San Francisco, site of the 1915 Pan-Pacific exposition. Between Reno and Sacramento it had two routes, and the southern, or Pioneer, branch followed what is now U.S. 50 west from Carson City around the south shore of Lake Tahoe to Placerville and then to Sacramento through what is now Rancho Cordova, using a path just north of this monument along today’s Folsom Boulevard. The area, then known as Mills, saw farm trucks carrying grapes, pears, hops, and other produce from riverside fields to market. After nearby Mather Air Field opened in 1918 and Aerojet General began building rockets nearby by the 1950s, Folsom Boulevard remained the community’s backbone corridor, but farm trucks gave way to daily commuters to Aerojet and Mather as Rancho Cordova grew. By 1925, as the United States moved from one named highway to a confusing system of many, a numbering system was created, and the Lincoln Highway was divided into parts of U.S. Highways 1, 30, 530, 40, and 50. By the late 1940s its memory was beginning to fade as Americans grew up with paved roads and numbered highways, but the Lincoln Highway Association was reactivated in 1992 and remains dedicated to preserving the highway and its history along the original route in Rancho Cordova.