Lincoln Highway News

Illinois Lincoln Highway Coalition  unveiled two more of the 40 Interpretive Murals being installed along the Illinois Lincoln Highway National Scenic Byway and its corridor. The two are in Cortland and Genoa, the latter never on the route but nonetheless being recognized as being within the highway’s corridor of influence. Both murals feature “The Good Roads Movement.”

The Cortland mural, at 55 West Lincoln Highway, showcases dirt and gravel roads evolving into concrete. The Genoa mural, at 232 West Main Street, depicts road dragging contests. According to ILHC:

After receiving a National Scenic Byway Grant from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and an Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, Bureau of Tourism, Attraction Development (TAP) Grant, ILHC worked with our vendor, Jay Allen of ShawCraft Signs, to make this project come to life.

Each of the 40 communities is asked to designate representatives to work with ILHC on this project, as well as secure a building site for the mural, research stories and images linking their community to Lincoln Highway and agree to provide maintenance and preservation of the mural. Each mural is valued at $10,000. Upon completion of this project, a print piece will be created highlighting each interpretive mural and gazebo (16 of them from a recently completed project) with a map and small description of each.

You can view images of the progress HERE and HERE as slideshows or individually.

For more information on the Illinois Lincoln Highway Coalition, visit www.drivelincolnhighway.com/.

Tags: Cortland IL, Genoa IL, highway history, history murals, Illinois history, Lincoln Highway

This entry was posted on March 9, 2010 at 10:35 am and is filed under highways, history, Lincoln Highway, signs, transportation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.