While the Lincoln Hwy idea was originated by Carl Fisher in Indianapolis and was tirelessly promoted from here in its beginning stages, it did not run through Indianapolis. None of it!

There were several reasons why this was so. To begin, because he had a lot of big money contacts, Henry Joy, the president of the Packard Motor Co, had been chosen by Fisher to become the president of the Lincoln Hwy Assn. And yet even though the LHA headquarters moved north to Detroit after the route west had been successfully scouted from Indianapolis, the Lincoln Hwy did not pass through Detroit either. Instead, a 245 mile spur connected it to the Lincoln at Valparaiso, IN which is 150 miles north of the Indy 500 City. In making  the connection between New York City and Chicago more direct, the Lincoln had found it important to bypass both Indianapolis and Detroit.

They could not miss the  Windy City because the railroad had made it  an important lynch pin to cross country travel. As one boxcar after another brought cows to its slaughterhouses, Chicago had become the center of focus for much of the Nation. In fact, from from 1865 to 1880, cowboy led cattle drives originating in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and even Montana, all marched herds to Chicago  bound rail heads. By the tine Fisher and his group began mapping their Transamerica route, then, Chicago, already doing business with many of the lands west of the Mississippi River, could not be bypassed.

Another factor made Chicago important. Bridges. Over first the Mississippi River. And then the Missouri River. Even if bridges strong enough for cars had not been built over them, a hotter more southerly route across America would have not only moved  travelers away from Chicago, and even Indianapolis, it would have placed them in more remote parts of country.  And still left them with two unbridged rivers to cross, the Arkansas and Colorado Rivers, after they made it over the Mississippi.

Besides, there was already a well worn travel way between Chicago and Fulton, Illinois at the Mississippi River  the Lincoln Hwy coud use. From there, they could use the Lyons Fulton Bridge. It had been built in 1891 to get cars, horses and pedestrians from Fulton to Clinton, Iowa on the other side of the mammoth Mississippi.

Once over the Ole Man River, the also formidable Missouri River on the other side of Iowa had to be crossed. For this the Lincoln Hwy route would use the Ak-Sar-Ben Bridge  that had been built in 1888 to connect  Council Buffs to Omaha, Nebraska.

Once over both of these water crossings, west coast bound travelers, were a few hundred miles north of the middle of the United States. This was important because it kept them from having to cross over the highest parts of the Rocky Mountains. Moving the Lincoln Hwy north of central Colorado also allowed it to roughly parallel the known lands surrounding the Oregon and Mormon Trails, as well as the transcontinental railroad  that we talked about in “Manifest Destiny and Taming the Western Frontier for Carl Fisher and the Automobile Age”.

Other posts about Indianapolis history Martin Krieg created as he wrote "How Indianapolis Built America" are at this link HERE