Original Lincoln Highway marker in front of Reliance Fire Company at 1341 West Market Street in West York. (Google street view)
Take a trip on the new Lincoln Highway Legacy website
If you haven’t yet looked at Tom and Taylor Davidson’s new interactive Lincoln Highway Legacy website, click this link: Lincoln Highway Legacy.
It has an easy to navigate map chock full of color coded markers of sites along the original stretch of Lincoln Highway across York County, now designated Routes 30 and 462. The sites marked fall under headings such as: Entertainment, Food & Drink, Historic Site, Lodging, Outdoor, Retail, and Transportation. (Most of us history enthusiasts are especially interested in the blue markers, which designate historic sites.)
When you click on a marker it will take you to a short description of the site and additional links. Those links will then transport you to the marked location’s website for more information and/or perhaps a link to a blog post by my fellow history bloggers or me with more information about what occurred there. You can also click the Places to See dropdown menu at the top of the page. From there you can follow links to stories and graphics on specific communities along the Lincoln Highway in York County.
The Lincoln Highway Legacy website is very new, and the Davidsons are busy adding more markers and stories, so go back often. Tom Davidson spoke on the Lincoln Highway and his research and plans at a recent York County History Center Writers’ Roundtable. Here is a link to that program on the YCHC YouTube channel.
As Tom mentioned in his talk, in the early 20th century more and more people owned automobiles and needed places to go. The Lincoln Highway was one of the popular sightseeing routes, and it was included in popular travel books. Here is a link to my former York Sunday News column quoting the 1916 travel book written by Louise Closser Hale, in which she humorously described her passage driving across York County.
