How ‘Ike’ helped pave the Lincoln Highway in Greene County

Rick Morain

What links Dwight Eisenhower, the Lincoln Highway and Greene County? nnLocal history buffs know. “Ike,” at the time a 28-year-old lieutenant colonel, volunteered to help lead an Army convoy of 81 trucks and other military vehicles on a 3,251-mile coast-to-coast journey along the newly-birthed Lincoln Highway in the summer of 1919, spending the night in Jefferson along the way.

The trek, hampered often by mud, dust storms, failed bridges, difficult mountain passes, and other frustrations, sought to evaluate if the nation’s emerging roadway system could move large numbers of troops and equipment quickly over long distances, after American troops returned from victory in World War One the previous year.

That’s how Dr. Brian C. Black, professor of history and environmental studies on the Penn State campus at Altoona, Pa., defined the trip in his new book “Ike’s Road Trip,” subtitled “How Eisenhower’s 1919 convoy paved the way for the roads we travel.”

Jefferson native David Yepsen recently gave me a copy of the volume, and I’m grateful. It’s an easy, informative, and enjoyable read. Dave says he enjoyed it so much that he also sent copies to the Jefferson Public Library and the Greene County High School library.

Besides its stated purpose, the convoy played a crucial commercial role for the burgeoning American auto industry. Six years earlier, in 1913, leaders of the auto, tire, and cement sectors of the nation’s economy organized the Lincoln Highway Association, with Packard’s Henry Joy as its first president. They very soon hit upon a plan to publicize the need for better roads: a cross-country excursion of some kind. The 1919 military convoy provided exactly what they were looking for.

According to author Black, “Eisenhower and the rest of America’s youth know nothing of the planning and plotting of these automobile schemers.” However, when the convoy departed Washington, DC, to begin the voyage, its pilot car was a luxurious white Packard Twin Six. And the official convoy speaker at every stop was Dr. S. M. Johnson of the National Highway Association.

Ike and the convoy left Washington (even though New York City was the official eastern terminus of the route) on July 7 and arrived in San Francisco on Sept. 1, some 56 days later. That’s an average of fewer than 60 miles a day. Ceremonies along the way accounted for some of the slow pace, but most of the reason was the poor quality of the ill-kempt and mostly unpaved route. Army engineers had to repair bridges and free bogged-down vehicles over miles of muddy, scruffy stretches of road.

The unpaved part — that’s a key for Greene County history. When the convoy arrived in Jefferson on July 28, the county was deep into consideration of whether to scrape together a million dollars to pave the Lincoln Highway the entire 26 or so miles from the county border to county border. No other of the route’s 13 counties across Iowa had yet done so.

Coincidentally, a public referendum on the paving question was to take place in Greene County just two days later, on July 30.

Author Black noted that convoy spokesman S. M. Johnson, speaking to a very large crowd in town, emphasized that the auto and truck industry was growing “explosively,” but outstripping the infrastructure on which to use it. He noted that, unlike with the railroads, there was no centralized road-building industry to construct the routes. Bad roads, he said, would cost farmers more than the tax dollars necessary to improve them, from wear and tear on their vehicles.

His talk apparently carried weight. Two days later the Greene County referendum succeeded 3 to 1, the highest proportion of favorable votes in the state. With the funds secured, paving across the county began promptly.

Yepsen notes that $1 million in 1919 would be worth a lot more in 2025 dollars. It would actually compute to $18.58 million today, a very sizable property tax investment.

So Ike helped push and pull the convoy coast to coast over the Lincoln Highway. When he was later leading the Allied war machine to victory in Western Europe in 1945, his troops were able to move rapidly eastward across Germany by using the Germans’ own autobahn, a multi-lane high-speed highway system. Ike was impressed, and after he won the American presidential election in 1952, he successfully pushed his vision of an American interstate highway system through Congress in 1956.

What’s not very well known, according to author Black, is that the single most likely reason for congressional approval of the interstate project was a perceived need to provide a way for millions of urban residents to quickly flee more than 100 American cities if the Soviets launched a Cold War nuclear attack on the United States.

But 1919 wasn’t Eisenhower’s only visit to Greene County. During his 1952 campaign he took a whistle-stop campaign train along the then-Chicago and Northwestern railroad in Iowa, coming through Jefferson about six blocks north of the Lincoln Highway route he had followed 33 years earlier as a young lieutenant colonel.

My dad, a strong Eisenhower supporter, had made large signs for his four boys to hold up at the C&NW depot. As the oldest, I got to hold the “I Like Ike” sign, and my three brothers each held up one that said “Me Too.” I don’t recall if we were acknowledged by the candidate or not.

I’ve often wondered if the future President, on that trip, remembered his other brief stop in Jefferson back in the day. Greene County is not blessed with one of his interstate highways, but he played a role in helping us spring for a paved Lincoln Highway.

Rick Morain is a reporter and columnist with the Jefferson Herald.