[Abby Brown] From the moment the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869,
trains were the only transportation method for people who wanted to go long distances between states.
Roads that people traveled on in wagons or carriages pulled by animals like horses were
thought of as the only way to travel locally, not long distances, until
the Lincoln Highway.
The Lincoln Highway was our country's first transcontinental highway.
In 1913, the route was established, and by 1915 it was official.
People could travel the highway from New York City to San Francisco.
It opened up a whole new world for people wanting to travel from coast to coast.
I'm at the Lincoln Highway Museum in Grand Junction, Iowa, with my new friend Joyce.
So when was the Lincoln Highway route, all the way from New York to California, first established?
[Joyce Ausberger] It was established in 1913.
[Abby] Okay, but we didn't have hard surface yet.
So tell me what it was like when it first was established.
[Joyce] Except for around the communities like New York
and Philadelphia, they had hard surface, but everything else was mud.
[Abby] And what was travel like in mud?
[Joyce] It was very, very bad.
And in 1919, there was such a thing as the Army convoy going across the United States.
Dwight Eisenhower was on it, and they were trying to prove to people,
we need good roads. They called it the Good Road Movement. And so he and all of these people,
and I have a book here showing pictures, of the long convoy that went across and they got stuck
and they'd pull each other out and they got stuck. They broke down bridges. They had to rebuild them.
And it was nothing but a muddy mess. And they hated Iowa because we had the gooiest mud.
[Abby] Really.
[Joyce] Yes.
(laughter)
[Abby] So how long did we have this mud highway before we had it completely paved?
[Joyce] Well, there were some counties that graveled their road.
[Abby] Here in Iowa.
[Joyce] In Iowa, Well, in other states, too.
[Abby] Okay. But here in Iowa,
there was a movement towards not just gravel, but concrete, Right?
[Joyce] Right.
[Abby] So they started with these seedling miles. Tell me about that.
[Joyce] Well, they wanted the people that lived far away from anything
that looked like concrete to know there was such a thing as concrete.
[Abby] Yeah.
[Joyce] So each state had what they called the seedling mile.
And the one in Iowa is between Mount Vernon and Cedar Rapids. And you drive through the mud,
maybe even get stuck because they chose the time of the year when it was wet.
[Abby] Sure.
[Joyce] And they had this mile long of concrete. And people had never seen concrete before.
[Abby] People are still
traveling the Lincoln Highway to get from coast to coast of our nation. But there are
lots of choices for highways now. Right? So what does that mean for Highway 30?
[Joyce] Well, if you want to take the scenic route,
you take Lincoln Highway. If you want to get there in a hurry, you take Interstate 80.
[Abby] Because you go a lot faster.
[Joyce] It goes clear across the 13 states, just like the Lincoln Highway did.
[Abby] Why is it called the Lincoln Highway?
[Joyce] Well, actually, in 1912, when these people got together, they said,
okay, what are we going to call this highway that we've proposed? And they said, I think it should
be a memorial to Abraham Lincoln. At that time, there was no statue of Abraham Lincoln.
That’s a memorial in Washington, D.C. But obviously Lincoln tried to bring the country together.
And we said we're bringing the country together by putting 13
states and going across country. And it's free.
[Abby] I see lots of these in your museum. And I've also seen these when
I've been on Lincoln Highway. And kids might too. Tell me about this sign.
[Joyce] Well, we want people to know when they're on the Lincoln Highway
and the main way to tell it. They started out by painting posts and it was painted Lincoln Highway just like this.
Because we decided this would be the logo clear back in 1913. So they
painted all these posts telling them where to turn with an arrow. The next
thing we did was put Lincoln Highway markers, which is a concrete marker,
like about this high, with this logo on it.
And so then the DOT in Iowa helped put all these signs up to tell you where to turn.
[Abby] So next time you're on a family road trip, cruising down the road,
going 65 or 70 miles an hour, imagine what that trip would have been like for a kid like you a hundred years ago.
How would that trip have been a whole lot different? Have fun investigating new discoveries in Iowa.