The Lincoln Highway entered California from the east along two different routes:

• The northern or Donner route runs parallel to I-80. In good weather, you can exit at Truckee and take the scenic drive past Donner Lake and over the original Donner Pass.
• The southern or Pioneer branch follows U.S. 50 west from Carson City, Nevada, around the south shore of Lake Tahoe to Placerville, and on to Sacramento, where the two routes joined.

The original 1913 route followed what is now Highway 99 south to Stockton. From there, I-205 and I-580 now parallel much the same route the Lincoln Highway took into Oakland. A ferry once crossed the bay from here to San Francisco. For more detail on the route from Tracy to Oakland, see this Oakland Tribune article and map.

In 1927, the Lincoln Highway was realigned to follow a route now paralleled by I-80 through Davis, Vallejo, and Berkeley, where a ferry took Lincoln Highway drivers to San Francisco.

In San Francisco, the Lincoln Highway ran from the Ferry Building along Market Street, turned west on Geary Street, then right on 34^th Ave., which becomes Legion of Honor Drive. The western terminus of the Lincoln Highway is at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park.

For More Information

Web Sites

• California chapter
• Livermore Heritage Guild, which runs a museum in an old Lincoln Highway garage
• Driving directions from Tracy to Oakland and map by the Oakland Tribune
• The Road to Tahoe: Restaurants along I-80 and US 50, by the San Francisco Chronicle, 2001.

Books

• Lincoln Highway: California
  by Gregory M. Franzwa
  Published by Patrice Press, 2006.

Highlights