In Belle Plaine, I stopped to take some pictures at George Preston's service station. The Prestons serviced travelers on the Lincoln Highway for over 80 years, and they collected signs of all types.
The most famous bridge on the Highway is in Tama, Iowa. It actually has the words "Lincoln Highway" build into the rails.
In Colo, at the intersection of the Lincoln Highway and the Jefferson Highway (New Orleans to Winnepeg), I had lunch at the Niland Cafe. The hotel, cafe, and service station served LH autos, trucks, and buses for 70 years. All are now restored. The cafe had the front end of a 1939 Cadillac in one of the dining rooms.
A town called Nevada (I think they pronounce it nuh-VAY-duh) had a chainsaw sculpture of Lincoln in the front yard.
These grain elevators are everywhere. Iowa is the nation's leading corn producer, and I saw a lot of soybeans, too.
The small town of Beaver was on the original LH route, but was soon taken off when the highway was re-routed a couple of years later. This eliminated a couple of dangerous railroad crossings. The LH follows much the same path as the Transcontinental Railroad, and Union Pacific engines haul huge trains up and down the tracks regularly.
Grand Junction is home to the Iowa Lincoln Highway Association. The small downtown area had a lot of LH decorations, with this old bank building as the centerpiece.
When I arrived in Jefferson, Iowa, they had the town square blocked off and were beginning some type of festival. When I parked and walked to the square, I was told it was their annual "Tower View" festival. On one corner of the square, they have a 150-foot carillon tower which chimes on the quarter hour. I rode to the top with a guide named Hannah, who said that a philanthropist named W. F. Mahanay left instructions in his will for the tower to be built. She benefited from a scholarship program started by the Manhanays. From the top, I could see about 20 miles. The town also had a Lincoln statue, a hotel from the earliest days of the LH, and monuments to an Olympic archery medalist and a Medal of Honor pilot.
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| Lincoln statue, tower on left |
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| View from the top |
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| Doreen Wilbur |
Northwest of Scranton, a Civil War veteran named J. E. Moss insisted that the LH be routed past his farm, where he built a pair of matching monuments to Lincoln. Though once vandalized, they have been restored and look exactly like he intended in the 1920s.
Here is an assortment of LH markers I saw today...
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| Jefferson Highway marker at Niland's Cafe |
