Thursday 12th September 1912

Carl G. Fisher and James A. Allison announced that America’s first transcontinental highway would be finished in time for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, at a cost of a $10,000,000. They failed however, to win Henry Ford’s support for the project, putting their fund-raising efforts in jeopardy. Henry Joy, president of Packard and a supporter of the highway project, came up with the idea of naming the road after Abraham Lincoln – an idea that resulted in $1.7 million in federal funds for the project. The highway was eventually completed as a memorial to Abraham Lincoln, paved in concrete rather than gravel, and christened the Lincoln Highway.