October 24, 2013

One Hundred Years Ago Today in Transportation...

At Friday’s regular weekly luncheon meeting of the Greater Moline Committee of the city of Moline in northwestern Illinois, members of the group listened to Edwin W. Woodcock read his written report about the American Road Congress he recently attended in Detroit. Woodcock’s presentation focused on the discussions at that congress about plans for the Lincoln Highway.

The first formal meeting of the organizers of that proposed highway had taken place in Detroit that past July 1, and the Lincoln Highway Association announced its planned route for that coast-to-coast road on September 14. In recounting the history to date of what he characterized as “the great transcontinental highway,” Woodcock described in effusive terms how the idea of such a route originated with Carl G. Fisher of Indianapolis and also how much momentum had already been achieved for that cause.

“The daring conception soon crystallized into a well-organized and unselfish movement,” proclaimed Woodcock at the luncheon. “Under the inspiring name, ‘Lincoln Memorial Highway,’ an ever-growing army of public-spirited men and women has developed this one-time obscure movement into a national one.”

Woodcock also cited plans across the country the following week to promote the new thoroughfare. “To stimulate further this nationwide movement,” he explained, “it is proposed on the coming night of Oct. 31 to have bonfires, torchlight processions and speeches in every city, village, hamlet and crossroads touched by the highway.”

In making that statement, Woodcock gave voice to the widespread and steadily developing arrangements by that time to hold celebrations on the last day of that month to help officially dedicate the Lincoln Highway. He evidently did an effective job persuading the Greater Moline Committee to jump on board that bandwagon, notwithstanding the fact that there were no plans for the Lincoln Highway to be built in the vicinity of the city. As reported in the next day’s edition of the Rock Island Argus newspaper, the committee gave Woodcock “a rising vote of thanks” for his presentation and then approved a resolution to establish a local good roads association to help champion the Lincoln Highway.

**Information from this article extracted from the Oct. 25, 1913 edition of the Rock Island Argus newspaper, available here