1923 National Highways Association Map of the Lincoln Highway

This is a 1923 National Highways Association map of the United States. Highlighting the proposed route of the Lincoln Highway from New York to San Francisco, the map depicts a portion of the continental United States from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean and from Montana, South Dakota, Minnesota, and New England south to the central United States. Created as a promotional piece for the Lincoln Highway, and more generally for the 'one hundred fifty thousand miles of national highways proposed by the National Highways Association. With the central focus placed on the Lincoln Highway, every city, town, and village along the proposed highway would pass is marked by a white dot and labeled. The rest of the highway network snakes its way across this slice of the country, with cities and large towns meriting a label as well. National parks are noted throughout the country by a shade of purple, while the bright yellow sections are Indian reservations. The green scattered about the American West represent national forests. A profile view of the changes in elevation experienced along the route of the Lincoln Highway is situated along the bottom and includes the names of hotels, garages, and the distance in miles either from San Francisco or miles from New York.

The Lincoln Highway

The idea for the highway was originally conceived and promoted by Carl Graham Fisher, an early automobile entrepreneur who manufactured Prest-O-Lite carbide gas headlights. An early racecar enthusiast and one of the principal investors of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, he first presented the idea of a transcontinental highway to friends in the automobile industry and estimated the cost at $10 million. Within a month he had raised the first $1 million. At first, the name Lincoln Highway was not available, as a group of Easterners was seeking federal support to build a Lincoln Highway from Washington to Gettysburg, but that project never gained enough support to get off the ground. So, Fisher's first called his project 'The Coast-to-Coast Rock Highway' or 'The Ocean-to-Ocean Highway', but quickly claimed the name Lincoln Highway once it became available.

Established on July 1, 1913, the Lincoln Highway Association began work on establishing a highway from Times Square in New York City to Lincoln Park in San Francisco. One of their first tasks was to establish a route. The relatively dense road network east of the Mississippi River made route selection in that part of the country relatively easy. When it came to the western route, however, the Association elected to send a 'Trail-Blazer' tour of seventeen cars and two trucks from Indianapolis to San Francisco, where they arrived after a thirty-four-day journey. The 3,389-mile route was announced on September 14, 1913, but as non-improved segments of this first route were improved over time, the route was reduced by 250 miles.

The Lincoln Highway only bore this name until the national highway numbering system came into effect in November 1926. With the advent of this system, the Lincoln Highway was split into several different segments known by different numerical designations, and the name Lincoln Highway began to fall out of use. It would not be until the 1990s that a movement began 'to identify, preserve, and improve access to the remaining portions of the Lincoln Highway and its associated historic sites'. Today, there are state chapters of the reconstituted Lincoln Highway Association in twelve Lincoln Highway states and in 2013 the Lincoln Highway Association organized a tour commemorating the highway's 100th anniversary.

This map was created by the National Highways Association and published in 1923.