Lincoln Highway

A Lincoln Highway historic byway marker in Nevada.

A Lincoln Highway historic byway marker in Ohio.

The Lincoln Highway is a former transcontinental highway route predating the establishment of the United States Numbered Highway System. In general, OpenStreetMap does not record historical alignments of defunct highway routes, so these alignments belong on OpenHistoricalMap. However, nowadays, much of the original route has been designated as a historic byway by state and federal authorities, which can be mapped in both projects.

Possible data source

The Lincoln Highway Association maintains an official nationwide map of historical alignments of the Lincoln Highway. This map comes with a disclaimer very clearly stating that they don't provide data or allow third-party reproduction. In 2013, a mapper got in touch with the Lincoln Highway Association about using the data this map. The director only gave us permission to copy their map, The following JavaScript fragment may be pasted into web browser development tools, or perhaps used in a userscript, to eliminate the appearance of tracing directly from Google Maps:

var mo = lha.map.map;
mo.mapTypes.set("OSM", new google.maps.ImageMapType({
                getTileUrl: function(coord, zoom) {
                    return "http://tile.openstreetmap.org/" + zoom + "/" + coord.x + "/" + coord.y + ".png";
                },
                tileSize: new google.maps.Size(256, 256),
                name: "OpenStreetMap",
                maxZoom: 18
            }));
mo.setMapTypeId("OSM");

Even so, OSM's focus would be on the byway route that is signposted suitably for wayfinding in the present day. Some state highway departments have more clearly unencumbered sources of data on where Lincoln Highway route markers are posted. For example, in Ohio, the Ohio Department of Transportation has published a dataset of scenic byways that participate in the Ohio Byways program. This dataset is available in their TIMS portal, which means it is in the public domain.

Relations

3958115 3958115

See also

• Other relations for nationally significant highways in the United States
• United States/National Trails System#National Scenic and Historic Trails
• OpenHistoricalMap/Projects#US Historical Trails
• OpenHistoricalMap/Projects/United States/Highways#Auto trails