Today, the 89th anniversary of the launch of the U.S. Army’s First Transcontinental Motor Convoy, Craig Harmon, Director of The Lincoln Highway National Museum & Archives, has announced two more discoveries: the convoy photo album and the official report.
The album, with more than 100 photos, belonged to Expeditionary Commander Lt. Colonel Charles W. McClure.
The official report, seen above with fold-out charts, is believed to be the only survivor of 2 or 3 since the War Department preferred to distribute shorter accounts to garner publicity for the promotion of better highways.
The convoy crossed the U.S. in 1919 to test the mobility of the military during wartime. Twenty-four officers (including Lieutenant Colonel Dwight Eisenhower) and 258 enlisted men took 81 motorized Army vehicles from Washington, D.C., to Gettysburg, and then followed much of the Lincoln Highway to San Francisco, arriving 62 days later.
More information on the documents will be forthcoming. See Harmon’s website for more general information, or ask there to be added to his email updates.
Here’s a photo of Buddy and Bob (posing as one of the pioneering motorcycling Van Buren sisters) in the Dixon Welcome Center. They stopped here on Thursday, July 3rd, to visit the Lincoln Highway Interpretive Center. We lunched at The Salamander in downtown Dixon with Mayor Jim Burke and Diane Bausman, Executive Director of the Blackhawk Waterways Convention & Visitor Bureau.
This is the signage at the new location of the Dixon Welcome Center on the corner of River and Galena Streets. It houses a Lincoln Highway Interpretive Exhibit. The center opens Mon – Sat at 10 a.m.
Buddy, Bob, and I then stopped in Franklin Grove to visit the LHA Headquarters where they bought a couple of shirts from Lyn Asp. While there, they sat for 5 minutes and conducted an interview via cell phone with a lady named Karin who was reaching them from France. They are making news worldwide now! They are really nice gentlemen and are full of stories from all of their travels of the world.
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