The Lincoln Highway was America's first transcontinental highway, conceived in 1912 specifically for automobiles after parts of its route had been used in 1908 for the New York to Paris automobile Great Race. Carl Fisher of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Frank Seiberling of Goodyear Rubber Company, and Henry Joy of the Packard Motor Car Company envisioned a 3,400 mile improved hard-surface road from New York to San Francisco at a time when most roads outside a few northeastern metropolitan areas and some California cities were dirt and gravel, dusty and rutted in dry weather, muddy in wet weather, and nearly impassable in winter. Joy suggested naming the route after Abraham Lincoln, and the Lincoln Highway Association was created in 1913 to promote its construction through private and corporate donations, with the route officially named in July of that year. Public enthusiasm for good roads helped spur clubs and associations and encouraged the federal government in 1926 to designate numbered rural routes, with much of the Lincoln Highway in the West becoming U.S. Highway 30. In Wyoming, U.S. 30 closely followed the old route with only minor improvements to bridges, curves, and grades, but the Interstate Highway System established in 1956 permanently altered the original highway, as large parts of its western section became Interstate Highway 80, some directly atop the old road and some obliterating original segments. In Wyoming the route entered at Pine Bluffs, followed portions of U.S. 30 through Egbert, Burns, Archer, and Cheyenne, passed west through Lincolnway or 16th Street and along Otto Road by the former Union Pacific Railroad stations at Corlett, Borie, Otto, and Granite Canyon, then continued by Ozone, Buford, Sherman Hill, and Laramie, and farther west through Bosler, Cooper Lake, Lookout, Harper, Rock River, Medicine Bow, Rawlins, Rock Springs, Green River, Lyman, Fort Bridger, and Evanston before entering Utah. Although complete by 1925, the entire highway was not paved until 1928, when the Boy Scouts of America placed more than 2,000 concrete roadside markers along the route, including more than 200 in Wyoming, bearing a Lincoln bust seal and providing directions through towns, cities, and rural turns.

Photo: Barry Swackhamer

Photo: Barry Swackhamer

Photo: Barry Swackhamer

Cheyenne, Wyoming · USA