Truckers got to love that coast-to-coast highway

Bust of Abraham Lincoln overlooking I-80 in Wyoming -photo Lindsay Godfree

Spending your life traveling on America’s highways is a unique lifestyle, and you have to love “the road.” Cross country drivers really appreciate the Interstate Highways and the visionaries who built them especially when the roads are smooth and get you there fast. If you explore the conception and building of the highway systems, you will discover the origins of the Lincoln Highway, conceived in 1913 as America’s first coast-to-coast highway. At the beginning it was an experiment in road building that is eventually credited with “pulling the nation out of the mud and starting it on a great travel adventure.”

The original highway stretched from New York City’s Times Square at Broadway and Forty-Second Street to San Francisco’s Lincoln Park on the Pacific shore. It crossed the states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California on its way across the country. Like the historic Route 66, it is often in pieces away from the current Interstate System but close by. Some sections are integrated in the current highway system.

While driving across Interstate 80 today you will find the Lincoln Highway in Wyoming, set with and an impressive bust of Abraham Lincoln atop a rocky outcropping just east of Laramie, and at the summit a welcome center for Wyoming. As a trucker, you may know this stretch of road well since it becomes very treacherous during the icy roads of winter and the hill is sometimes covered in snow and slick when other parts of the highway are not.

Henry Bourne Joy memorial - photo Lindsay Godfree

Amazingly, one man thought it was a great place to be buried. That man was Henry Bourne Joy, President of the Packard Motor Car Company, one of the major forces behind the Lincoln Highway Association whose goal it was to construct a concrete highway across the country. During his life he was dedicated to the dream of a cross country highway system for automobiles. He loved this highway so much he wanted to be buried on it at the end of his life. Although his family denied his request to be buried along the Highway they did erect the monument for him and you will find it at the foot of the Lincoln statue at the Summit Rest Area.

Also seen at this exit is a Wyoming welcome center with interesting dioramas of Wyoming’s wildlife with grizzly bear and some antelope that are often seen crossing the plains. You can look out the large picture window for a stunning view of the highway, traffic, a hawk perched on the treetop, wildflowers or silent snow drifts, depending on the time of year.

In Wyoming there is a driving tour of the Old Lincoln Highway consisting of two routes coming out of Laramie for a total distance of 145 miles. For directions and how to follow the Old Lincoln Highway consult the Lincoln Highway Assoc. I don’t imagine this is for truckers but would be an interesting side trip if you were waiting for a load in Laramie.

For a state-by-state series of guidebooks to this great road, start with a book titled, “The Lincoln Highway: Iowa and moves west from there.”

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