The city of Folsom, California has dedicated the 1893 Folsom Historic Truss Bridge after Donald Alden, who spearheaded efforts to have the bridge returned to the city after it sat in Siskiyou County from 1931 to 2000. The bridge carried Lincoln Highway traffic until it was bypassed by the adjacent Rainbow Bridge in 1917.
The Kearney Hub’s “This Week in History” column briefly covers the seedling mile of the Lincoln Highway in Kearney, Nebraska, completed in 1915.
This article was written by Michael Kaelin, recording secretary of the California Chapter of the Lincoln Highway Association.
Francis “Frank” H. Duarte passed away on November 22, 2011. He was the last business owner of the iconic Duarte’s Lincoln Highway Garage in Livermore, California.
Frank was born in 1915, the year of the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, a magnet destination and banner year for development of the early Lincoln Highway.
Frank had just turned 96, and had returned to Livermore in 2008 from Applegate, where he had retired in 1977. He had owned and managed Duarte’s Garage since his discharge from the Army Air Corps in 1945. Previously, he started working for his father, Frank, at the garage in 1934, later enlisting as an aircraft mechanic in 1939.
Mr. Duarte is survived by 2 nieces, Kathy Erickson of Scottsdale, Arizona and Donna Kosch of Everett, Washington. Services for him on December 14 were private, and Frank was interred at St. Michael Cemetery in Livermore. Donations in his name may be made to the Duarte Garage Museum, now operated by the Livermore Heritage Guild.
Coincidentally, the California Chapter is holding its winter quarter meeting at Duarte’s Garage on January 7, 2012. It will be a joint meeting with the Livermore Heritage Guild after a luncheon at Beebe’s Restaurant at the Livermore Golf Course.
James Baughn of the Southeast Missourian writes about the oldest concrete highway in Missouri, completed in 1921, and how it is being obliterated by trucks rebuilding river levees.
The Desert Research Institute, part of the Nevada System of Higher Education, has precisely mapped the Lincoln Highway through the Utah desert west of Salt Lake City.
Be sure to check out their photo tours of the 1913 and 1919 routes. It takes a little while to load, and there is no indication that a tour is loading, so be patient.
Thanks to Rachel Quist for the tip!
An old diner is being restored to its 1930s glory and will become the focal part of the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor’s Lincoln Highway Experience Museum, being built in Unity, Pennsylvania.
P. Grover Cleveland, a landscape photographer and history and travel buff, is writing about his trip along the 1913 alignment of the Lincoln Highway from Truckee, California to Salt Lake City on his blog, Camera and Pencil in the Mountains. His posts are full of photos, tips, and GPS waypoints.
Re:New DeKalb said that its renovation projects of downtown DeKalb, Illinois will be finished by summer 2012. It has already completed projects that, among other things, improved the streetscape of the Lincoln Highway through the city.
“TruckeeDave” has two blogs, CorduroyPlanet on Blogger and CorduroyPlanet on Tumblr, where, among other topics, he writes about the Lincoln Highway, especially in California. One of his entries includes a proposal for the Amgen Tour of California bicycle race to have a Lincoln Highway leg in 2013, the highway’s centennial.
Two organizations will join forces to showcase Ohio’s portion of America’s first coast-to-coast road next June. The Ohio chapters of the national Lincoln Highway Association and the official Ohio Lincoln Highway Historic Byway are planning to bring over 200 visitors to the McKinley Grand Hotel in Canton, Ohio for a week of lectures, seminars, day-long road trips, banquets and other evening activities, all draped with the theme of Pathways & Presidents and celebrating the Lincoln Highway.
The annual conference is held each year somewhere along the corridor from New York to San Francisco. This last summer, Lake Tahoe dazzled attendees with their local culture and history, and two years ago Dixon, Illinois, birthplace of Ronald Reagan, hosted the week-long conference.
The conference will begin Monday, June 18, providing something for everybody. Plans are for a special welcome reception open to anyone wishing to have answers about the historic road, and there will be a special Marmon automobile exhibit one day of the conference. Attendees are from all over the United States and the world, and usually leave with much more knowledge of the early automobile era and this famous highway, and about this area of the country.
According to conference organizer Jim Cassler, there will be additional tours focusing on Ohio’s Amish Country, a train trip on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad and a trip to the National Packard Museum in Warren, Ohio honoring Lincoln Highway co-founder, Henry Joy, who was also president of Packard Motors. Presidential activities will include Canton’s First Ladies National Historic Site, while a trip to Marion will highlight Warren Harding’s involvement in the early highway.
Anyone interested in learning more may visit www.lincolnhighwayassoc.org or www.historicbyway.com for general history of the highway. You may follow breaking information on Facebook as well. Registration information will be available there at a later date.
Contact: Mike Hocker, Executive Director
Ohio Lincoln Highway Historic Byway
www.historicbyway.com
Voice: (419) 468-6773
Fax: (419) 468-5139
email: info@historicbyway.com