Lincoln Highway News

The Grand Island Independent ran a nice follow-up to the Lincoln Highway Festival in Shelton, Nebraska, including a walk through of the LH Visitor’s Center there. Following are some parts of their story.

But now as the 80-year-old Nebraska president of the Lincoln Highway Association, Stubblefield is doing more than watching the highway and its traffic — he’s helping preserve the history of its creation.

He helped create the Lincoln Highway Visitor’s Center located at C Street and Highway 30 in Shelton and shares time staffing that center with other volunteers of the Shelton Historical Society. All are just a cell phone away to greet visitors and open the center’s doors at the back of the historic First State Bank building….

Once inside, it’s everything Lincoln Highway.

Pens, postcards, water, letter openers, ashtrays.

There’s Lincoln Highway cigars — just 9 cents in the day — and of course, there’s Burma Shave memorabilia.

“Do you know where Jerome’s Tepee was in Grand Island?” Stubblefield inquired as he pointed to an original black pennant professing the tepee in Grand Island to be in the “center of North America.”

It was right by the big Husker Harvest Days billboard located at Highway 30 and Husker Highway, Stubblefield said, on the north side of the road.

“It was what was called a tourist trap,” he chuckled.

One of the most stunning displays in the visitor’s center is a row of original metal Lincoln Highway mileage markers. They were purchased by the Automobile Club of Southern California and erected along the highway to give travelers an idea of distance to the next stops.

“Brule 1 mile, Big Spring 11 miles,” stated one sign. “Paxton 10 miles, North Platte 43 miles.”

Stubblefield and other members of the association (there are 100 in Nebraska and 1,100 nationwide) have purchased the signs at auctions, antique stores or wherever they are found.