No road maps, no road signs, nobody cares.  If one wants to travel farther than 10 miles from home, he can ride a train.  Otherwise, the horse and buggy does just fine, thank you.  Across America, the few early roads there were led nowhere in particular and often ended in someone's barnyard or disappeared on the plains and deserts of the west.

But in 1912, along came Carl Fisher with a new idea.  "Imagine a road clear across the United States!  Let's build it before we're too old to enjoy it," he challenged the country. Many agreed with Fisher.  The Lincoln Highway Association held it's first meeting July 1, 1913, and acknowledged his idea.  The automobile was here, and a transcontinental road was needed.

Fisher was the head of the Prest-O-Lite Company that made headlights for a new invention, the automobile.  The Prest-O-Lite was a little drum filled with acetylene gas carried on the running board of an automobile. When it grew dark, a driver would get out and "lite-up."

Studying the history of the Lincoln Highway is the passion of many today.  There are State and National Lincoln Highway Associations that promote researching the history of the roadway.  Ruth Frantz of Sugar Grover is the director of the Illinois Association, and Sue Jacobson, Aurora, is secretary for the National Association which is holding its annual conference this week in Rochelle.

One of the activities of the conference will be a bus ride over the old road from Rochelle to Mooseheart.  After stopping in DeKalb at the Elwood House, the members will travel east on Keslinger Road, proceed south on Third Street past The Little Traveler and the Railroad Depot in Geneva.  They will ride through Batavia in their way to Mooseheart, where they will donate a display of highway history to the museum there.

The Lincoln Highway was built in sections as local funds were available and eventually reached from Times Square in New York to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.  The builders, "Resolved, that the Lincoln Highway now is, and henceforth shall be, an existing memorial in tribute to the immortal Abraham Lincoln."

In 1912, Illinois Governor Edward F. Dunne set aside $1.2 million of state funds to establish a state highway department.  The first of these funds went to Kane County for a portion of the Lincoln Highway.  Thus, Kane holds the distinction of being the first county in Illinois to construct roads with state funds.

In 1914, Mooseheart, between Batavia and North Aurora, was chosen as the place to inaugurate this new era ion road building for Kane County had expressed an interest in improving its roads, and it was the fourth most populous county in Illinois, giving it influence in Springfield.  Local automobile clubs lobbied for road improvement s, but most importantly, Mooseheart volunteered to pay for the paving in front of its property and to furnish the labor to build the road if the state would furnish the necessary equipment.  Mooseheart spent $12,000 for the ¾ mile past its property.