Indiana Lincoln Highway Byway

Indiana's Lincoln Highway Byway follows the original 1913 route of America's first coast-to-coast auto highway for about 170 miles, from Dyer to Townley. Built as the Lincoln Highway, running New York City to San Francisco, it carried the country's earliest road-tripping tourists from 1913 until a 1928 realignment sent through-traffic onto a straighter path that became US 30, bypassing much of the original route between Fort Wayne and Valparaiso. Roughly 90 percent of that 1913 alignment can still be driven today, passing through towns like Ligonier, Benton, Goshen, Elkhart, South Bend, La Porte, and Valparaiso, many with vintage motels, diners, and roadside architecture from the highway's early auto-tourism era. Indiana designated the route a Historic Scenic Byway in 2011 specifically to encourage travelers to rediscover this slower, original road instead of the modern US 30 corridor that replaced it. It's less a scenic drive through nature than a drive through the early history of American car culture.

• 1913 Lincoln Highway
• Elkhart County towns
• 170 miles
• Dyer to Townley
• 2011 Historic Scenic Byway
• US 30 realignment
• early auto-tourism architecture