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Remembering the earlier times of the Lincoln Highway
Omaha World-Herald May 23, 2004
BEAVER, Iowa (AP) - Three graduate students were dispatched out in the summer
of 2002 to log historic features - motels, gas stations, bridges and other
landmarks - along the coast-to-coast Lincoln Highway.
"The way I put it was they had eight weeks, while doing an extensive survey,
from New York to San Francisco on the backest road possible," said Kevin
Patrick, a geography professor at Indiana University in Pennsylvania.
The students identified 1,463 features, including 147 in Iowa. The map was
done on a scale of one inch for every 2,000 feet. Put that on paper and you'd
have a map 748 feet long.
"You can see why it had to be in the computer," Patrick said.
There were no such maps when Carl G. Fisher, who built the Indianapolis Motor
Speedway and later developed Miami Beach, began promoting his idea of a
transcontinental highway in 1912.
His dream became reality the following year when the road was named after one
of his heroes, Abraham Lincoln, and the route was announced. On its path through
Iowa, it ran right past the Benton County farm where Nova Daniels grew up.
It was just a dirt lane then, and Daniels, 87, remembers watching the cars
stir up the dust - and bog down in the mud. That would send her father to the
barn to hitch up the horses and pull the unfortunate motorist out of the muck.
One Christmas, four cars became snowbound in front of their farm, and the
occupants - three couples and a family of four - all spent the holiday at the
farm, sleeping on floors and spare beds and dining on goose, duck and chicken.
"After it was paved, the traffic really picked up," Daniels said. "Before
that, it was just a few brave ones. You'd see them go by with gear to camp with.
There were no cabins or anything like that. Motel wasn't even a word then."
Eventually, the highway spawned a roadside industry, some with eye-catching
designs - a hotel shaped like a ship in the Pennsylvania hills, a Pennsylvania
restaurant in the shape of a coffee pot, the all-white Twin Towers one-stop in
Cedar Rapids, a concrete tepee in Wyoming.
The Twin Towers is gone, but other historic structures remain in Iowa.
The most famous bridge on the route, its concrete supports carved to spell
out Lincoln Highway, still stands in Tama, not far from the King Tower Cafe,
notable for its neon Indian head sign.
Volunteers are restoring a garage and tourist cabins that flank a roadside
restaurant at Colo. A cafe west of Cedar Rapids, a stop called Youngville, has
reopened, though two historic tourist cabins at the site were destroyed by a
recent fire, and another was damaged.
The roadway itself is an attraction in some areas. Woodbine in western Iowa
has a brick street that was part of the route. A brick stretch, not much wider
than a bicycle trail, runs near Elkhorn, just west of Omaha.
Other remnants are more subtle, such as the Lincoln Highway logo and arrow on
the utility poll at the west edge of Grand Junction, directing drivers to turn
left into town.
All are reminders of an earlier time, when travelers could immerse themselves
in the countryside - sometimes literally when it was muddy - instead of just
speeding past it on a smooth, four-lane Interstate.
"We just take it for granted that I-80 was always there," said Bob
Stubblefield, the Nebraska representative to the national Lincoln Highway
Association.
"In the beginning, it wasn't always like that. The road's a part of our
nation's history, really. It was THE coast-to-coast highway."
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