Greetings from the Lincoln Highway

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 11. APR. 2005

The Lincoln Highway, conceived by an automotive accessories manufacturer named Carl Fisher in 1912, was hardly a highway by today's standards. It was more a web of existing roads and short stretches of new construction, all dotted with visible road markers, that finally gave motorists a single route to follow from New York to California. Before its inception, motorists, few as they were, would often have to take old wagon trails, especially in the West, and cut down wire fences along the way. Although the Lincoln Highway was barely an interstate in the modern sense, it was a massive improvement, though within a decade it was overshadowed by the fabled Route 66 and is now just a series of "faint traces." Butko's easygoing, state-by-state account is a fun amble through 14 states including West Virginia, Indiana, Iowa, Colorado and Utah, not overly nostalgic, yet indulging in remembrances of old diners and corny roadside attractions, like the Shoe House, a five-story building shaped like a work boot in Pennsylvania. Butko (Diners of Pennsylvania) peppers the narrative with quotes from early 20th-century travelogues, and the inclusion of snapshots and old postcards establishes a chatty ambience. Although readers will probably want to skip around (the descriptions of the highway in some states are dull), this is a detailed and well-illustrated travel diary. 351 color, 54 b&w photos; 15 color maps.