Lincoln's Last Link

While a band blared before a reviewing stand and a crowd of 3,000 bellowed, two caravans ambled slowly toward each other one day last week across the bare Nebraska prairie near North Platte. First came Pony Express riders, followed by oxcarts, stage coaches, high-wheeled bicycles, "horseless carriages," and finally streamlined automobiles. Filing proudly past, they marked the climax of a ceremony which drew notables from miles around. Immediate reason for the celebration was that workmen had just finished 28 miles of new concrete road. More significant: Nebraska at last had a paved road running from one end of its 460-mi. length to the other. Most significant: The last link in the Lincoln Highway had been completed, giving the U. S. its first transcontinental hard-surfaced road. Now known as "U. S. Route 30" most of the way from Atlantic City to Oakland, the Lincoln Highway was conceived by Promoter Carl Fisher early in the Century. Packard's onetime President Henry Bourne Joy formed the Lincoln Highway Association in 1913, pushed through the survey preliminaries in two years, began actual road building in 1915. With the War, the Government formed the Highway Transport Committee of the Council of National Defense, became interested in the project. This was the beginning of the present National Highway System. With its sage cooperation, the Lincoln Highway progressed slowly but surely to its completion last week.

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