The Ohio chapter of the Lincoln Highway Association and the Ohio Lincoln Highway Historic Byway will be hosting the 2012 Lincoln Highway Association conference in Canton, Ohio, for a week beginning Monday, June 18.
Norman Root, long-time member of the Lincoln Highway Association, president of the California chapter and past California state director, has passed away. He was also a retired bridge engineer for the California Department of Transportation. Norm will be sorely missed.
Cecelia Otto writes about her experiences at this year’s Lincoln Highway Association Annual Conference in South Lake Tahoe.
Cecelia Otto, a songwriter who is traversing the Lincoln Highway, has posted some of her photo highlights of the tours at this year’s LHA Annual Conference in South Lake Tahoe.
The city of Plymouth, Indiana has granted the Lincoln Highway Association permission to install a Lincoln Highway tourist information kiosk at the corner of Jefferson Street (Lincoln Highway) and Cleveland Street.
This guest post was written by Jeff LaFollette, Iowa state director of the Lincoln Highway Association.
Spring is beginning and there will soon be warmer temperatures, and with that come the sound of classic cars rolling on the open road like the ones that will be cruising on the 4th Annual Iowa Lincoln Highway Association Motor Tour scheduled for August 26–28, 2011.
The motor tour, which is sponsored by the Iowa Lincoln Highway Association, is asking everyone to “Come Join Us ‘4’ A Fun Timeâ€. This year’s tour begins with a pre-tour event on Thursday, August 25 in Council Bluffs and will end in Clinton County on Sunday, August 28. The historic route travels nearly 330 miles across Iowa going through the communities of Council Bluffs, Denison, Carroll, Jefferson, Boone, Ames, Marshalltown, Tama, Cedar Rapids, and Clinton.
The idea of the Lincoln Highway came from the mind of Carl Fisher, the man also responsible for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Miami Beach. With help from fellow industrialists Frank Seiberling and Henry Joy, an improved, hard-surfaced road was envisioned that would stretch almost 3400 miles from coast to coast, New York to San Francisco, over the shortest practical route. The Lincoln Highway Association was created in 1913 to promote the road using private and corporate donations. The idea was embraced by an enthusiastic public, and many other named roads across the country followed.
The Iowa tour kicks off on Friday, August 26 in the Council Bluffs area, with stops in Denison, Carroll, Jefferson, Grand Junction and Boone, where the tour will stay overnight.
On Saturday, August 27, the tour departs from Boone, and stops at Ames, Colo, LeGrand, Tama, Belle Plaine, and Youngville before overnighting in Cedar Rapids. The tour offers a group get-together dinner at the Hotel at Kirkwood, on the campus of Kirkwood College in Cedar Rapids, a facility where students learn their trade in hotel and restaurant management. The dinner will be prepared by student chefs.
On the final day, Sunday, August 28, the tour departs from Cedar Rapids and continues east to Mount Vernon, Lisbon, Clarence, Wheatland, and will end either in DeWitt or Clinton.
The tour will travel as much of the original Lincoln Highway route as possible. This is a “classic car friendly†tour: although some of the original route is gravel, the tour will not be traveling on those long gravel sections. There will be only a couple of short sections, less than half a mile to get to a stop or two. Otherwise the tour will be on all paved routes. All vehicles, including cars and motorcycles from the classics to the present, are welcome to participate.
This is a guest post by Jim Peters, Director-at-Large of the Lincoln Highway Association and coordinator of the Centennial Eastern Tour.
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Lincoln Highway in 2013, the Lincoln Highway Association is planning tours from both coasts along the early alignments of the Lincoln Highway. Many miles of the old roadway have not been swallowed up by the Interstates and still survive, running on two lanes in proximity to U.S. Routes 1, 30, 40 and 50, so the tours will provide a re-enactment of a trip across the U.S. in the 1940s and 50s.
The two tours will start on Saturday, June 22 from New York and San Francisco, and will meet in Kearney, Nebraska on Sunday, June 30. The Centennial Celebration from July 1 to July 4 will include a car show, the Association’s annual conference, and local Independence Day celebrations. There will also be a re-creation of a tourist camp; participants with pre-1932 cars are invited to set up camp. If there is significant interest, the tours will continue to the East and West Coasts starting on July 5.
The tentative itineraries are below.
We also plan to allow participants to join and drop out of the tour at any point, with prior notification and registration.
Also, you can watch this blog or follow us on Facebook and Twitter as we post more information on the tours as it becomes available.
Continue reading “Lincoln Highway Centennial Tour coming in 2013”
The Lincoln Highway Association is now on Facebook and Twitter. Come join us!
The public is invited to the Indiana Lincoln Highway Association’s Holiday Gathering and House Tour at the Kimmell House Bed & Breakfast on the historic Lincoln Highway!
Kimmell House Inn Bed & Breakfast
1397 N US Highway 33
Kimmell, IN 46760
Saturday, December 4, 2010 at 2 p.m. EST
(pre-register by Wednesday, December 1)
Cost: $16 (includes entrée, beverage, tax, and gratuity)
Bring a friend!
This unique event includes food and drink; a tour of the historic rural property, which is eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places; and auctioning of holiday gift baskets. Lincoln Highway merchandise will be for sale, and attendees are invited to share news from along the Lincoln Highway. An update on the Indiana Lincoln Highway byway application with INDOT will be given. Come join the holiday festivities in grand style and get acquainted with members of this non-profit organization that are working to preserve and promote the Lincoln Highway and bring economic development to northern Indiana! Casual attire. Antiques autos are welcome!
Please pre-register by December 1 by mailing a check payable to INLHA and mail to:
Indiana Lincoln Highway Association
402 W. Washington Street
South Bend, IN 46601
For more information, call (574) 210-6278 or go to www.indianalincolnhighway.org.
The association is delighted to hold this year’s holiday event at the Kimmell House Inn in Kimmell, Indiana. This unique historic property welcomes overnight and casual dining opportunities to travelers, and we are so fortunate to have it on the corridor.
This bed and breakfast, owned by Dean and Deb Stoops, is one of several bed and breakfasts along the Lincoln Highway corridor in Indiana. It is certainly a beautiful and unique setting for tourists and locals alike. The owners will provide a personal tour of the property to all of those attending.
Places like this lure tourists off the interstates to experience the wide variety of local people, food, and culture across northern Indiana. We hope the public will support the inn and our association’s mission. The Indiana Lincoln Highway Association works to increase the public’s knowledge about America’s early auto highways and Indiana’s role in auto and travel history. These efforts bring tourism and economic development to northern Indiana.
So, come spend a bit of time in Kimmell, Indiana!
– Jan Shupert-Arick, President, Indiana Lincoln Highway Association
Introduction to Kimmell
Kimmell is located Noble County, Indiana. The first county seat was in Kimmell, which was known as Sparta at the time. The town is located on the old Fort Wayne-to-Goshen Trail, which later became part of American’s first coast-to-coast auto highway, the Lincoln Highway, in 1913, and is now US 33.
Today, Gaerte Grain is the hub of rural Kimmell, with huge silos standing as monuments to this tiny town’s rural past and present. Once one of the largest distribution points in the nation for onions, old warehouses still line the tracks of the B & O railroad. Noble County’s soil made both onion and mint crops some of the country’s best. Popcorn was also stored and shipped from Kimmell warehouses, but today’s commodities are corn and soybeans.
Noble County is also home to the last remaining brick paver section of the Lincoln Highway in Indiana, just south of Ligonier.
Just to the south of Kimmell is the Kimmell House Inn, a stately solid brick Italianate mansion built in 1876. For more information and for driving directions, visit kimmellhouseinn.com.
The Lincoln Highway Association is taking nominations for sites to be added to our Preservation Opportunities list, which will be used to draw attention to their plight. This list will be announced at the National Conference in Dixon, Illinois in June 2010.
Nominations are due May 1, 2010.