POTTAWATTAMIE COUNTY

Crescent

CRESCENT	Pop. 300 Alt. 990	Control, Post Office.
Carroll	Omaha	One railroad, 5 general business places, express company, telephone company. Garage.
86.8	11.9
Graded Dirt, Concrete

- A Complete Official Road Guide of The LINCOLN HIGHWAY Fifth Edition (1924)

North of Crescent.
This family has the distinction of using the Lincoln Highway for their driveway! The give-away is the concrete culvert hidden in the peony bushes halfway up the road. From there the roadway took a right turn through the farm field. The new road, Iowa Highway 183, gently bypasses this sharp curve of the 1913 route to the west.

Crescent.
The historic Pink Poodle supper club is at right.

South of Crescent.
From Crescent south to near Council Bluffs, the Lincoln Highway still exists as a notch - or "shelf road" - cut into the hillside, high enough to keep it out of a flooded river plain. Most of the shelf road is on private land, some of it still is use for driveways. This picture was taken from Highway 183, with the shelf road looking dark and mysterious.

South of Crescent.
This is the most common example of the shelf road. See the tiny scar between the corn and the tree line.

"We left Omaha, after looking about the city, late in the afternoon and drove one hundred and eight miles to Carroll in Iowa. The first twenty miles out of Omaha the road was extremely poor and very dusty. The trees were much more numerous, black walnut, ample, ash, and catalpa being among them."

- Effie Gladding, 1915