In 1912, the United States had approximately one million registered motor vehicles but few good roads, and long-distance automobile travel remained a muddy, adventurous novelty outside urban areas. On September 14, 1913, the Lincoln Highway Association announced the official route of the nation’s first transcontinental highway, extending 3,389 miles from New York City to San Francisco through thirteen states, after Carl G. Fisher advanced his vision of a coast-to-coast rock highway linking historic routes and town main streets across America; it was renamed the Lincoln Highway in honor of Abraham Lincoln. In Iowa, the route ran from Pottawattamie County to Clinton County, crossing 13 of the state’s 99 counties. The association sought a permanent paved road across the nation, and under president Henry B. Joy promoted concrete paving and the Seedling Mile program to encourage rural communities to build mile-long demonstration sections; one Iowa section was built in Linn County in 1919. World War I helped turn road improvement into a national concern, but the creation of the federal numbered highway system in 1925 ended named highways, and the Lincoln Highway was divided among routes including 1, 30, 40, and 50; in Iowa it became U.S. Highway 30 in October 1926. Competition among routes intensified when a toll bridge at Blair, Nebraska, opened in 1929, saving about 30 miles and helping shift U.S. 30 in 1931 onto a new segment from Missouri Valley across the Blair Bridge to Fremont. The westward promise associated with the road remained powerful through the 1930s and after World War II. The Lincoln Highway Association disbanded in 1927 after arranging for the Boy Scouts of America to install 3,000 concrete markers along the route on September 1, 1928, and although the highway had officially ceased to exist, the association was revived in 1992 to promote its study, preservation, and enjoyment. In Harrison County, the route’s establishment was celebrated in October 1913 as passing through Woodbine, Dunlap, Logan, and Missouri Valley. Woodbine received a notable brick-paved section called Lincoln Way, built in 1920 and 1921 and restored in 2003. The original Harrison County route crossed the Boyer River multiple times, and through the Loess Hills it required deep cuts into the bluffs; its most unusual segment, the stairsteps between Woodbine and Logan, made a series of 90-degree turns before being straightened in 1919 as the first improvement project on the Lincoln Highway.