Quoting again from John McPhee's Annals of the Former World: ". . . [W]e reached eight thousand six hundred and forty feet, the highest point on Interstate 80 between the Atlantic and the Pacific. What appeared to be the head of a chicken sat at the top of a big granite block, as if it had been chopped off there. Only when we drew close did I glance up and see that it was Abraham Lincoln. It was, in fact, an artful likeness, resting on an outsized plinth. Years ago, this had been the summit of the Lincoln Highway, which was now incorporated in its substance, if not in its novel spirit, into the innards of the interstate."*

As you probably already know, the Lincoln Highway was the first transcontinental highway, stretching from New York to San Francisco. It was dreamed of in 1913 and charted in the early 1920's. It was to be the model for future highway building. I remember driving on parts of it in the late 1930's in northern Indiana.

At any rate, Cheyenne, Wyoming, was its highest point, and this statue was constructed here in commemoration of that.

*McPhee, John. Annals of the Former World. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1998. Page 321.

Photos and text ©D.L. Mark 2002

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