Lincoln Highway Illinois

The map below shows the first generation and subsequent second and third generation communities of the Lincoln Highway in Illinois, which adventurers can still visit today. The "Coast To Coast Rock Highway" took travelers past and present through town and countryside, up and down the rolling hills of the prairie, around curves, across creeks, rivers, ditches, and canals, and over, under, and alongside railroad tracks. Today, you can follow the original Lincoln Highway alignment, visiting nearly 40 communities along the way that helped to build the route through Illinois, making it the first state to complete its portion of the highway in its entirety. On the map below, communities along the original (first generation) Lincoln Highway routes are denoted in light blue. In contrast, communities later included during the second and third generation realignments are marked in a darker blue. As municipal annexations continued in suburban areas during the latter quarter of the twentieth century, new communities, such as Mokena and Oswego, shared boundaries with the historic route. The map below focuses solely on the communities traversed by the Lincoln Highway during its historic period (1913-1967).

Learn more about each community by clicking on each point for additional information. It's interactive!

View of the completed Lincoln Highway between Morrison and Fulton, Illinois, 1926.
Courtesy of the University of Michigan Library.