The Lincoln Highway

Charlottesville

June 26, 2024

I am fairly sure I have driven parts of the Lincoln Highway, but how did I miss the Roadside Giants??

The Lincoln Highway is one of the first transcontinental highways in the United States and one of the first highways designed expressly for automobiles.[1][2] Conceived in 1912 by Indiana entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher, and formally dedicated October 31, 1913, the Lincoln Highway runs coast-to-coast from Times Square in New York City west to Lincoln Park in San Francisco.

The full route originally ran through 13 states: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California. In 1915, the "Colorado Loop" was removed, and in 1928, a realignment routed the Lincoln Highway through the northern tip of West Virginia. Thus, there are 14 states, 128 counties, and more than 700 cities, towns, and villages through which the highway passed at some time in its history.

Here’s a link to the full Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Highway

Roadside Giants

During early Lincoln Highway days, business owners were intrigued with all the automobiles traveling the Lincoln Highway. In an effort to capture the business of these new motorists, some entrepreneurs created larger-than-life buildings in quirky shapes. Structures like Bedford's 2+1⁄2-story coffee pot, or the Shoe House near York, Pennsylvania, are examples of the "Roadside Giants" of the Lincoln Highway.

In 2008, the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor secured funding from the Sprout Fund in Pittsburgh for a new kind of Roadside Giants of the Lincoln Highway. High school boys and girls enrolled in five different career and technology schools along the 200-mile (320 km) Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor were invited to create their own Giant that would be permanently installed along the old Lincoln. The project involved collaboration among the schools' graphic arts, welding, building trades, and culinary arts departments. A structural engineer was hired to provide professional guidance to the design and installation of the Giants.[25] They include:

A 12-foot-high (3.7 m) 1920s Packard Car and Driver

A 25-foot-high (7.6 m), 4,900-pound (2,200 kg) replica of a 1940s Bennett Gas Pump

The 1,800-pound (820 kg) "Bicycle Built for Two"

The oversized quarter, weighing almost a ton

A detailed 1921 Selden pick-up truck

The world's largest teapot, 12 feet (3.7 m) tall and 44 feet (13 m) wide