Lincoln Highway Heritage Byway

The Lincoln Highway Heritage Byway crosses Iowa from the Mississippi River on the east to the Missouri River on the west, running roughly 460 miles and touching around 43 communities in 13 counties. For most of that distance it shadows US Highway 30, the modern route that grew up out of the old Lincoln Highway, but the byway deliberately slips off the fast highway again and again to follow the original alignment through the middle of town. Brown Lincoln Highway byway signs mark the way, and the fun of the drive is trusting them onto the older, slower road.

Because it is a prairie route across gently rolling farmland, the byway is flat, paved for almost its whole length, and about as easy to drive as a long road can be. There are no passes to climb and no cliffs to hug. A few short original sections survive as brick or gravel, kept that way on purpose as living history, but they are the exception, and every one of them is signed. Any ordinary car handles the whole route with no trouble.

What you come for is the layering of time. The scenery is quietly beautiful in the Midwest way, big skies and corn and soybean fields, but the real reward is roadside history hiding in plain sight. In one town you find a 1915 truss bridge, in the next a 1920s one-stop where two named highways once crossed, in the next eleven blocks of century-old brick street. Drive it slowly and it turns into a rolling museum of how Americans first learned to take a car across the country.

The simplest way to find the byway is to find US Highway 30, which runs straight across Iowa and shadows the historic route for most of its length. Coming from the east, you can pick it up near Clinton on the Mississippi River and follow US 30 west, watching for the brown Lincoln Highway byway signs that peel off toward the old alignments through towns like Belle Plaine, Tama, and Marshalltown.

Coming from the Des Moines area, the byway is an easy reach north and east. Take US Highway 30 through Ames and Nevada to hit the central heart of the route, including the town of Colo with its restored Reed/Niland Corner just east of Ames. From there you can run west toward Boone or east toward Tama, sampling whichever direction you have time for.

From the west, start near Council Bluffs and Missouri Valley in the Loess Hills and head east on US 30. However you join it, you do not have to drive all 460 miles to enjoy the byway. Many travelers pick one favorite stretch, such as the central run between Tama and Boone where the best-known landmarks cluster, and drive just that.

The Lincoln Highway began not with a government plan but with a car man's ambition. In 1912 Carl Fisher, an Indiana entrepreneur who had helped build the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, proposed a coast-to-coast graveled road and started a fund drive to pay for it. He first called it the Coast-to-Coast Rock Highway, but backers soon renamed it for Abraham Lincoln, and in 1913 the Lincoln Highway was formally announced as a route running from Times Square in New York City to Lincoln Park in San Francisco. It was America's first road planned to cross the entire country, laid out at a time when a trip from one coast to the other by automobile was a genuine adventure.

Iowa sat squarely in the middle of that dream, and the road changed the state. Small towns competed to be on the official route because being on the Lincoln Highway meant travelers, gas sales, cafe meals, and overnight stays. Filling stations, motor courts, and roadside cafes sprang up to serve the new breed of long-distance motorist. In the years that followed, much of the Lincoln Highway across Iowa was absorbed into the numbered federal highway system and became part of US Highway 30, but the original brick and concrete alignments still thread through many of the towns it first put on the map.

The byway that celebrates all this is a fairly modern creation. Iowa formally recognized the Lincoln Highway as a state Heritage Byway in 2006, working through the Iowa Lincoln Highway Association and byway partners to sign the route and protect its landmarks. The organizing idea was to preserve not a single monument but a whole corridor, the bridges and filling stations and brick streets that together tell the story of the country's first transcontinental road.

National recognition came years later. On February 16, 2021, the Federal Highway Administration named Iowa's Lincoln Highway Heritage Byway a National Scenic Byway, part of a group of newly designated routes added to the national program that year. The honor recognized the byway's deep historic value, its rare concentration of surviving early-auto-age sites, and its place as the longest and one of the most historic byways in Iowa.

• The Lincoln Highway was named for Abraham Lincoln, and it beat the Lincoln Memorial in Washington to it, becoming one of the earliest large-scale national memorials to the president when it was announced in 1913.
• The man behind it, Carl Fisher, first pitched it as the Coast-to-Coast Rock Highway and tried to raise the money privately, years before governments took over building the nation's roads.
• The Lincoln Highway bridge in Tama actually spells LINCOLN HIGHWAY out in its concrete railings, letter by letter, which is why it is the most photographed spot on Iowa's stretch of the road.
• Colo's Reed/Niland Corner is the last intact spot where the Lincoln Highway and the north-south Jefferson Highway crossed, a genuine 1920s one-stop where the gas station, cafe, and motel still stand together.
• Woodbine kept about eleven blocks of the original 1920s brick Lincoln Highway and has been restoring it block by block, so you can still drive on the same brick early motorists did.
• Iowa's byway is its longest, running roughly 460 miles and connecting around 43 communities across 13 counties from the Mississippi River to the Missouri River.
• Near Boone stands the Kate Shelley High Bridge, named for a teenage girl who in 1881 crawled across a storm-damaged railroad trestle in the dark to warn of a washed-out track and prevent a disaster.
• The byway earned its National Scenic Byway title in 2021, part of the first new round of national byway designations in more than a decade.

The Lincoln Highway Heritage Byway was named a National Scenic Byway by the Federal Highway Administration on February 16, 2021, as part of that year's group of newly designated byways. Iowa had already recognized the route as a state Heritage Byway back in 2006, and the road itself dates to 1913, when the Lincoln Highway was announced as America's first transcontinental auto route.

Iowa's Lincoln Highway Heritage Byway runs roughly 460 miles from the Mississippi River on the east side of the state to the Missouri River on the west, making it Iowa's longest byway. Driven straight through it would take about a full day, but almost no one drives it all at once. Most travelers pick a favorite stretch and give it a few relaxed hours, stopping in the towns along the way.

The highlights cluster in the central part of the route. Do not miss the 1915 Lincoln Highway bridge in Tama with LINCOLN HIGHWAY spelled into its railings, the restored Reed/Niland Corner one-stop in Colo just east of Ames, and Woodbine's original brick Lincoln Highway street farther west. The Youngville Cafe near Watkins and Preston's Station in Belle Plaine are two beautifully preserved old roadside stops as well.

Yes. The byway follows public roads, so driving it costs nothing and there is no pass or fee to travel it. Individual attractions along the way, such as museums or shops, may have their own admission or purchases, but the road itself is free and open to everyone.

Late spring through early fall gives the greenest fields, the longest daylight, and the most small-town cafes and shops open along the route. Iowa's harvest season in early fall is a lovely time to see the farm country at work. Daytime driving is best so you can read the roadside history and the byway signs easily, and any time of day is fine since this is a gentle, well-marked road.

Yes. The Lincoln Highway Heritage Byway is a paved, low-elevation prairie route with no seasonal gates or winter closures, so it is open all year. Unlike mountain scenic drives that shut down in the snow, this road stays drivable through every season, though winter storms can make travel slower and some small-town attractions keep shorter hours in the cold months.

No. The byway is almost entirely paved and flat, and any ordinary passenger car handles it with ease. A few short original sections survive as brick or gravel and are kept that way as history, but they are smooth enough for a regular car, and they are always signed so you know when you are on one.

The byway drives fine in winter as long as the weather cooperates. It is flat and paved and closely follows US Highway 30, which is plowed and well maintained. Iowa winters do bring snow, ice, and occasional blowing-snow whiteouts on the open prairie, so it is wise to check the forecast and road conditions before setting out and to give storms time to clear.

Yes, and plentifully. Unlike remote mountain byways, this route runs through dozens of Iowa towns, so gas stations, cafes, restrooms, and lodging are never far apart. Larger stops like Marshalltown, Boone, and Ames near Colo have full services, and even the small towns usually have somewhere to fuel up and grab a meal, which suits a road built to serve travelers in the first place.

US Highway 30 grew out of the old Lincoln Highway and is the fast modern route, but the historic road often ran through the heart of each town rather than around it. The byway deliberately follows those older, slower alignments so you can see the surviving bridges, filling stations, and brick streets that make the route special. Following the brown Lincoln Highway signs onto the original road is the whole point of the drive.