At a dinner party for automobile manufacturers at the Deutsches Haus in Indianapolis on September 1, 1912, Carl G. Fisher, president of the Prest-O-Lite Company and father of the Indianapolis 500, unveiled his plan for a highway spanning the country from New York City to California and urged auto executives to build a road across the United States before they were too old to enjoy it. A few months later, Henry Joy, president of the Packard Motor Company, pledged $150,000 for the proposed roadway, became a leading force behind getting the coast-to-coast highway built, and suggested naming it for Abraham Lincoln. On 1 July 1913, the Lincoln Highway Association was created with Joy as president and Fisher as vice president, aiming to procure a continuous improved highway from the Atlantic to the Pacific, open to lawful traffic of all description without toll charges, to be known in memory of Abraham Lincoln as the Lincoln Highway. In Indiana, the Lincoln Highway had two routes: the 1913 route followed a more northern path through the state, and the route was straightened and moved south with the advent of the National Highway Act in 1926, when the Lincoln Highway was numbered Highway 30 under the new national marking system in the U.S.
