SUNDAY, AUGUST 27, 1911
[Note about this
article: Before the Lincoln Highway Association was formed on 1 July
1913, which eventually established the Lincoln Highway as a
coast-to-coast road, there was already growing support to improve roads
in America. The Lincoln Highway name was in fact used earlier by a
different group of people, proposing a route between Washington D.C.
and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, who sought funding for the project from
the nation's government. This newspaper article refers to that earlier
Lincoln Highway proposal. Congress, however, declined to make any
appropriation and the project collapsed. Thus the name became available
for use by the Lincoln Highway Association, which succeeded in their
goal by appealing for subscriptions from individuals and
businesses together with support from municipalities, counties and
States. Federal funding for routes across the United States eventually
came in the 1920's.]
LINCOLN HIGHWAY ENTERING WEDGE
Many Prominent Men Speak for the Good Roads Movement in Many States.
Federal aid in road building may become an actuality
within the next twelve months. From all over the country accumulates
positive evidence of the pronounced belief that the National Government
should give attention to better inter-State communication by road, and
men prominent in affairs of State are declaring themselves one after
another as being in accord with this progressive policy of the
Nation’s leaders, none is more emphatic than Speaker Champ Clark,
who, in a communication to President Robert P. Hooper of the American
Automobile Association, expresses this opinion:
“I believe the time has come for the
general Government to actively and powerfully co-operate with the
States in building a great system of public highways. I believe the
building of the Lincoln Highway would be the entering wedge for the
creation of a splendid system of roads that would bring its benefits to
every citizen in the country.”
Congressman Borland of Missouri, who is putting
forward the Lincoln Highway bill in the House of Representatives,
summarizes the matter very briefly: “What we need is a monument
that will be of some use to the people now living on earth. If we could
have the views on the subject of the great commoner, Abraham Lincoln,
himself, I am satisfied he would be in favor of such a tribute. There
is no monument so enduring as a highway.”
In commenting upon the proposed route, Chairman
George C. Diehl of the National Good Roads Board concisely puts forth
these words: “A good broad, highway, connecting historic
Gettysburg with the capital of the Nation will be traveled by
thousands, where now the route is followed by hundreds, owing to its
serving as a road in name only. Motor-driven vehicles are inter-State
as well as intra-State, and that which they accomplish in obliterating
State lines will prove more effective than any other means in cementing
this Nation into a solidified whole, for where men meet and exchange
views there has been a broadening of the viewpoint and a more thorough
understanding of the wants of one another.
“With the time-saving and distance-decreasing
vehicle at our disposal it follows as a natural sequence that we must
supply the right kind of road and maintain it properly in order to
secure and retain the benefits that have been brought about by the
coming of the automobile—a
thing more valuable to the farmer than to the urban resident, a fact
which is daily becoming more apparent to the man in the country.”
Exceptionally good confirmation of the statement of
Chairman Diehl, that the man in the country is realizing that the
motor-driven vehicle is more for him than for the man in the city,
comes from Kansas. Thomas McKay is a farmer who lives fourteen miles
from Oberlin, where the local Farmers’ Institute held a session.
Thereat Farmer McKay spoke as follows: “Some
of us farmers are standing in our own light. We argue that we should
not build good roads for motor cars to travel over. I have no motor
car, but it seems to me that a road that is good for a motor car is
good for a farmer to haul a big load of wheat over, or for me to drive
my surrey over to take my family to town. We are too afraid that we
will do something which will benefit some one else, and, in fact,
we are the losers by our own acts. I have already graded a mile of road
along my farm on Prairie Dog Creek. Just to show you people that that I
desire a good road reaching from the south part of the country, where I
live, to Oberlin I will agree to take my boy and my team, if necessary,
and grade another mile of that fourteen miles if the rest of you
business men and farmers living along the road will do your
share.”
Some of the farmers in attendance wanted to know the
cost, and then agreed to do their share if McKay would superintend the
job. McKay would not be bluffed, and his fellow farmers supplied their
share of the money, and the fourteen-mile stretch of improved dirt road
was soon placed in travelable condition.
From The
New
York Times, Sunday, 27 Aug 1911, page C8
See also the following for information on the coast-to-coast Lincoln Highway:
