1913 Lincoln Highway Association Map of the Lincoln Highway

This is a 1913 Lincoln Highway Association and American Automobile Association map of the proposed route for the Lincoln Highway, what would become the first transcontinental automobile road and the first national memorial to Abraham Lincoln. The map depicts the continental United States from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean and from Canada to Mexico. Highlighted in red and marked by diagonal lines, the original route for the Lincoln Highway stretches from New York to San Francisco and includes the 'Colorado Loop' that was removed from the route a few years later. Numerous other highways are illustrated, and those that are believed to be 'natural tributaries' are indicated by parallel lines drawn through those highways. Myriad cities, towns, and villages are labeled from coast to coast, as are major rivers, lakes, and mountain ranges.

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 Automobile Association of America and the Lincoln Highway Association and published in 1913.