about Lincoln Highway’s past

Lincoln Highway. When these two words are put together, they bring many different reactions from businesses, motorists and students alike. The businesses love the traffic, the pedestrians just want to get across to campus and the motorists just want to get where they’re going by the fastest route, which just happens to be L-Way. But people never stop to consider the history behind this groundbreaking piece of asphalt.

One Tucson, Ariz., author, Gregory Franzwa, a native of Glidden, has stopped to consider the ramifications of the road and has become so fascinated by Lincoln Highway that he wrote a 12-volume series of books on the subject, with the first volume featuring the Iowa part of the highway.

He will present a free slide lecture on that portion this Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Ames Public Library.

Franzwa decided to write the series when he was viewing the Grand Canyon and saw European visitors touring Route 66.

“I had decided that I thought it would be kind of glamorous; Lincoln Highway was forgotten,” Franzwa said. “Route 66 is only 2,000 miles long. It’s a bi-cultural road, but other than that, what’s there? Only one hell of a song, that’s it. But it has this notoriety.”

Franzwa feels that Lincoln Highway is more historic and goes through the most dramatic part of the United States. “It brought motor travel kicking and screaming into the 20th century.”

Major car manufacturers wanted a way to wear cars down faster, because cars would wear out only half as fast due to the lack of competent roads, Franzwa explained. “Going for a drive was one hell of an adventure,” Franzwa said. “If you were thinking about going from Ames to Omaha, it was one heck of an adventure.”

Back then, cars were open-aired and the public could smell the range and had great visibility, Franzwa said. “It’s one of the great thrills the motor public is missing.”

The slide show will include copies of pictures from scrapbooks of the original Lincoln Highway Association, now archived at the University of Michigan Library in Ann Arbor.

As America’s first transcontinental highway, Lincoln Highway extended from Times Square in New York City to San Francisco’s Lincoln Park. The highway entered Iowa at Clinton, coursing generally along present-day U.S. 30 to Missouri Valley, then cut south to cross the Missouri River into downtown Omaha.

After the 40-minute slide presentation, Franzwa will autograph copies of his new book, The Lincoln Highway: Iowa. The 200-page book, with 146 photographs, includes 92 pages of maps of the route across the state, enough for any history buff to find enjoyment.

“It’s a way to get people to save Lincoln Highway,” Franzwa said. “The more people know, the more difficult it [will] be for short-minded people to tear it up.”

Who says Ames, or Iowa, isn’t on the map?