The Lost Highway: America's First Cross Country Road

In 1900, there were about 8,000 registered automobiles in the United States. They were a genuine novelty. Those that attempted to go on 'road trips' met with a frustrating reality -- there were no drivable roads, no unified road maps, no nation-wide infrastructure of gas stations or amenities. The first automobiles to attempt cross-country travel were essentially UFOs streaking through a sparsely populated and isolated America. This is the story of how that all changed. This is the story of the Lincoln Highway , the first cross-country road in the Untied States, linking Times Square in Manhattan with Lincoln Park in San Francisco via a patchwork of pre-existing roads in twelve states. The Lincoln Highway was developed by automotive executives who wanted to use the cross-country road to promote automobile sales. It accomplished more than that; the Lincoln Highway invented the pleasures and eccentricities of American road travel.

You can listen to The Lost Highway: America's First Cross Country Road online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

The Lost Highway: America's First Cross Country Road is an episode from The First: Stories of Inventions and their Consequences by Greg Young.

This episode is 34:21 long.

This episode was published on Dec 21, 2017.

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