2013 marks the 100 year anniversary for the first US cross country highway.
Before speedy six-lane interstates and drive-me-crazy roundabouts, there was the Lincoln Highway.
The nation's first cross-country highway turns 100 this year.
The simple road stretched 3,380 miles -- from New York to San Francisco -- bringing prosperity to the villages and big cities it linked in 13 states including Nebraska.
People called it America's Main Street. For the traveling public, it would become a godsend.
In 1913, good roads were rare even east of the Mississippi River. In the countryside, cars drove on dirt that became impassable with rain or snow.
The Model T Ford made that year was the last offered in colors other than black, and the last before Henry Ford completed his famous assembly line, forever changing the nation's landscape.
The Model T Runabout with a 20-horsepower engine sold for $525 and could hit a top speed of 45 mph, if the driver dared trust the wood-spoke artillery wheels that came standard until 1926.
In Nebraska, the road west of Omaha was two ruts in the prairie, as Henry B. Joy, president of the Packard Motor Car Co., found out while traveling cross-country to promote better roads. Joy came up with the idea of naming the highway after Abraham Lincoln.
His efforts and those of other industrialists such as Carl Fisher, founder of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and Frank Seiberling, president of Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., led to completion of the Lincoln Highway in 1935.
"It was really a master plan of delegation," said Bob Puschendorf, deputy state historic preservation officer for the Nebraska State Historical Society.
With promotion and guidance from the grass-roots Lincoln Highway Association, also founded in 1913, a rudimentary route was laid down on a map without much surveying or research.
There were no federal or state highway departments. In Nebraska, road construction was the responsibility of the Board of Irrigation, Highways and Drainage.
"It was a maze of zig-zags," Puschendorf said, adding that the route often had to go where bridges existed.
"They looked for the best road, but they were always adamant about finding a direct route."
Communities along the route were encouraged to build "seedling" miles to showcase the benefits of good, paved roads to the country's nascent automobile-traveling public.
Grand Island, with the help of a local cement company and financial support from the community, was the first city in Nebraska and second in the United States to build a seedling highway. A segment of the original road project was placed on the National Register of Historical Places in April.
Another popular highway segment -- made of brick pavers near Elkhorn -- has become one of the best-preserved stretches.
Before the Lincoln Highway, most people traveled by railroad, as only the wealthy could spend weeks riding between towns in cars. In 1913, the nation had fewer than 200,000 miles of improved rural roads, which included gravel, stone and oiled earth.
Most rural roads were maintained by the people who lived alongside them, as many state constitutions prohibited paying for road projects.
The Lincoln Highway 1916 Official Road Guide suggested a trip from the Atlantic to the Pacific was "something of a sporting proposition" that might take as long as 30 days, if a driver averaged 18 mph for six hours each day.
Because gasoline stations were rare, the guide urged drivers to top off their tanks at every opportunity. It also suggested people should wade into water to verify the depth before driving across. Firearms weren't necessary, but west of Omaha, full camping equipment was recommended.
The Lincoln Highway would later inspire the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956, championed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who as a young soldier in 1919 was part of the first cross-country Army convoy.
The expedition of 24 officers and 258 enlisted men traveled the full length in 62 days to test military mobility on the heels of the Great War.
In Eisenhower's "Daily Log of the First Transcontinental Motor Convoy, Washington, DC to San Francisco, Cal., July 7th to Sept. 6th, 1919," he wrote that the group made good time until it hit Omaha, despite lax discipline and poor officers assigned to the trip. The convoy lost two days in western Nebraska because of sandy roads.
"They were object lessons to try to show people what good roads were all about," Puschendorf said of the seedling miles. "Concrete roads were a novel idea back then."
The last segment of the Lincoln Highway in Nebraska was paved near North Platte in 1935. It was such a crowning achievement that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sent a telegram to offer his congratulations.
"By that time, the Lincoln Highway became U.S. 30," Puschendorf said. "The route had changed by then."
Most of the gas stations, auto camps, motels and cafés along the route since have disappeared, but there still are vestiges of the road that helped transform America.
"One of the most picturesque is Shady Bend east of Grand Island," Puschendorf said of the historic gem that once sold gas and groceries to long-distance travelers and now is an Italian restaurant.
People can still follow parts of the original highway, often marked with a red, white and blue sign with a big L.