| Contact:
Jeff Morgan, Jeff.Morgan@iowa.gov,
(515) 281-3858
(DES
MOINES) – The Western Historic Trails
Center will welcome author and noted historian Gregory
Franzwa Sunday as he delivers a presentation about
the Lincoln Highway and the states it covers.
Franzwa’s presentation will be at 6:30 p.m.
Sunday at the Western Historic Trails Center, 3434
Richard Downing Avenue in Council Bluffs. Admission
is free. Guests are invited to join Franzwa and WHTC
staff for a picnic dinner at 5:30 p.m. Franzwa will
sign copies of The Lincoln Highway: Iowa
after his presentation.
The Lincoln Highway, conceived in 1913, was America’s
first coast-to-coast highway. A demonstration road,
it is credited with pulling the nation out of the
mud and starting it on a great travel adventure.
The highway stretched from New York City’s
Times Square at Broadway and Forty-Second Street to
San Francisco’s Lincoln Park on the Pacific
shore. In so doing, it crossed the states of New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska,
Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California.
The Lincoln Highway: Iowa is the first in
a series of state-by-state guidebooks that explores
the highway. Each title consists of two parts –
a narrative on the historic road with archival and
present-day photos accompanied by driving instructions
for today’s motorists. Travelers are guided
along pavement, asphalt, brick, gravel, “two-tracks,”
and dirt roads.
The second half consists of a map portfolio, showing
all known versions of the highway as a dark gray line
superimposed over the latest available 7.5-minute
topographic quadrangles from the U.S. Geological Survey.
Using these maps, the road may be followed from west
to east or east to west.
Call the Western Historic Trail Center at 712-366-4900
for more information.
The Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs is responsible
for developing the state’s interest in the areas
of the arts, history and other cultural matters with
the advice and assistance from its two divisions:
the State Historical Society of Iowa and the Iowa
Arts Council. DCA preserves, researches, interprets
and promotes an awareness and understanding of local,
state and regional history and stimulates and encourages
the study and presentation of the performing and fine
arts and public interest and participation in them.
It implements tourism-related art and history projects
as directed by the General Assembly and designs a
comprehensive, statewide, long-range plan with the
assistance of the Iowa Arts Council to develop the
arts in Iowa. More information about DCA is available
at www.culturalaffairs.org.
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