A caravan celebrating America’s first cross-country highway will be passing through Iowa soon, with an overnight stop in Ames.
The Lincoln Highway is 100 years old, and several hundred motorists will be converging on the Midwest in two groups: one from New York City and one from San Francisco. For 460 miles, the Lincoln cuts through the center of Iowa. Today, it is a Heritage Byway; much of it is now Highway-30, but some of the earliest sections remain charming, two-lane roads.
John Mazzello is Byway Coordinator with Prairie Rivers of Iowa.
“The Lincoln Highway really gives the communities that the old Lincoln Highway passed through, the opportunity to be on the road again, and so rather than by-passing towns on Highway-30, if you take the Lincoln Heritage Byways you have the opportunity to travel through those towns, visit those towns and experience those towns again,” Mazzello says.
The westward convoy will have roadside meals in Mt. Vernon, Colo and Woodbine, before rendezvousing with the eastward caravan in Kearney, Nebraska for the Lincoln Highway’s centennial, on June 30th.