Lincoln statues

To bring attention to the highway, Fisher commissioned statues of Abraham Lincoln, titled The Great Emancipator, to be placed in key locations along the route of the highway. One of the statues was given to Joy in 1914.^[12] Joy's statue was later presented to the Detroit Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America. That statue is currently on display at D-bar-A Scout Ranch in Metamora, Michigan.^[13] There is another statue of Lincoln in the main entrance of Lincoln Park (Jersey City).

Route selection and dedication

September 1920 photo near the intersection of Broad Street and Northeast Boulevard in Philadelphia

Essex and Hudson Lincoln Highway in Jersey City, New Jersey

The LHA needed to determine the best and most direct route from New York City to San Francisco. East of the Mississippi River, route selection was eased by the relatively dense road network. To scout a western route, the LHA's "Trail-Blazer" tour set out from Indianapolis in 17 cars and two trucks on July 1, 1913, the same day LHA headquarters were established in Detroit. After 34 days of Iowa mud pits, sand drifts in Nevada and Utah, overheated radiators, flooded roads, cracked axles, and enthusiastic greetings in every town that thought it had a chance of being on the new highway, the tour arrived for a parade down San Francisco's Market Street before thousands of cheering residents.
The Trail-Blazers returned to Indianapolis by train, and a few weeks later on September 14, 1913, the route was announced. LHA leaders, particularly Packard president Henry Joy, wanted as straight a route as possible and the 3,389-mile (5,454 km) route announced did not necessarily follow the course of the Trail-Blazers. There were many disappointed town officials, particularly in Colorado and Kansas, who had greeted the Trail-Blazers and thought the tour's passage had meant their towns would be on the Highway.
Less than half the selected route was improved roadway. As segments were improved over time, the route length was reduced by about 250 miles (400 km). Several segments of the Lincoln Highway route followed historic roads:

• a road laid out by Dutch colonists of New Jersey before 1675
• the 1796 Lancaster Turnpike in Pennsylvania
• the Chambersburg Turnpike, over which much of the Army of Northern Virginia marched to reach the Gettysburg Battlefield, a part of which is traversed by the Lincoln Highway.
• a British military trail built in 1758 by General John Forbes of England from Chambersburg to Pittsburgh during the French and Indian War, later known as the Pittsburgh Road and the Conestoga Road
• a section in Ohio followed an ancient Indian trail known as the Ridge Road
• sections of the Mormon Trail
• the Great Sauk Trail, an Indian trail through northwest Indiana
• portions of the routes of the Cherokee Trail, Overland Trail and the Pony Express
• the Donner Pass crossing of the Sierra Nevada, named after the unfortunate Donner Party of 1846
• an alternate Sierra Nevada crossing at Echo Summit following a pioneer stagecoach route

The LHA dedicated the route on October 31, 1913. Bonfires, fireworks, concerts, parades, and street dances were held in hundreds of cities in the 13 states along the route. During a dedication ceremony in Iowa, State Engineer Thomas H. MacDonald said he felt it was "... the first outlet for the road building energies of this community".^[1] He went on to advocate the creation of a system of transcontinental highways with radial routes. In 1919, MacDonald became Commissioner of the Bureau of Public Roads (BPR), a post he held until 1953, when he oversaw the early stages of the Dwight D. Eisenhower System of Interstate and Defense Highways.