PAGING THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY ASSOCIATION. On the main road from Moscow to Yakutsk, mud season looks like this.



(Via Newmark's Door.)

At one time, the main road from Chicago to Omaha looked like that also. But early in the automobile age, something called the Lincoln Highway Association imagined a paved road from coast to coast. No more mud season, forsooth! But rather than build the road itself, the Association prevailed on localities to build seedling miles, preferably in sections where the contrast with the mud road would be most dramatic. The objective was to convince residents to write their Congressmen and get the national government to pay for the roads.

The first such mile was built just west of Malta, Illinois.

Four more “seedling miles” were constructed in 1915. These “prototypes” immediately became popular motorist destinations. The stark contrast between these smooth patches of pavement and the bumpy or muddy roads leading up to them created a groundswell of public opinion in favor of “Good Roads.”

During snow season, the Malta section (now rebuilt) is probably easier to use than any section of the Moscow-Yakutsk road.

Image and more commentary courtesy Kishwaukee College.

Although the national government did pay for most of the road construction, private initiatives provided some of the incidentals.

By the end of 1927, the association had become inactive. As a last hurrah, Gael Hoag, its last paid representative, arranged to have thousands of Boy Scouts fan out to install concrete markers with a bust of Lincoln along the highway on Sept. 1, 1928.

A few of those concrete markers remain. A reconstituted Lincoln Highway Association works to conserve relics of that original highway.

Do I have any Russian readers? Could former Young Pioneers organize Russian youth for a similar mile-marker planting project and some seedling miles?