The Lincoln Highway National Museum & Archives-#80-Full Circle

The Lincoln Highway
National Museum & Archives
102 Old Lincoln Way West
Galion, Ohio 44833

(419) 462-2212 Voice
(419) 462-2214 Fax
(419) 566-0790 Cell

Number 080
Full Circle
June 12, 2003

Dear Friends,

And so we have finally come full circle...

What could be a more
"Fitting Monument"
to those lost on September 11th
and the subsequent
Battles of Afghanistan & Iraq than a
Road of Character...

"And we,
Americans,
have been given the opportunity
to build one in memory of that lofty soul
who represents to us,
more than anything else,
that great virtue-character."

"I have been asked to speak upon the artistic
possibilities of the Lincoln Highway,
but they are so vast that they stagger the imagination,
I can but prepare the canvas;
others will complete the picture."

"Whatever they may be,
I conceive this road as a scroll upon which,
from coast to coast,
the history of our land shall be recorded,
a river of life,
a symbol of the march of humanity toward perfection."

Mr. H. Van Buren Magonigle
American Institute of Architects
Annual Christmas Dinner
December 1914.

A Perpetual Memorial...

"The Lincoln Highway will never be finished.
You and I will be able to drive over it from New York to San Francisco in 1915.
Perhaps ten years from now every mile will be of concrete,
but there will always be something more to do, some improvement to make.
Not only is the Lincoln Highway a perpetual memorial,
but a road to be perpetuated by the energies of future generations.
We are only laying the foundations now."
The best minds in the country are "laying the foundation now"
for the beautification of the Lincoln Highway ..."
"They are working today that the tourist of fifty and one hundred years from now
may cross the country over the most beautiful and inspiring roadway in the world."
"The Lincoln Highway is to be something more than a road-
It will be a road with personality, a distinctive work
of which the Americans of future generations can point with pride-
an economic but also artistic triumph."