Bob & Joyce Ausberger on the past, present & future of “Traveling the Lincoln Highway” in program this Sunday at our museum

JEFFERSON, Iowa, June 20, 2022 — Bob and Joyce Ausberger, of Jefferson, longtime members and advocates for the Lincoln Highway Association, will be presenting a program “Traveling the Lincoln Highway” in a special program of the Greene County Historical Society on Sunday, June 26.

The program will be at 2 p.m. at the historical museum in Jefferson.  Admission and refreshments will be free.

The historic coast-to-coast highway, considered “America’s Main Street” from the 1930s thru the 1950s, then carried an average of 3,500 cars and 700 trucks per day across Greene County.  It went right through the business districts of Grand Junction, Jefferson and Scranton.

Joyce and Bob Ausberger

Joyce and Bob Ausberger

The Lincoln Highway’s prominence as a main traffic artery across the nation was drastically diminished in the late 1950s when new U.S. Highway 30 was built along the same general route, but bypassing most cities and towns.

The Ausbergers have been active in the Lincoln Highway Association for more than 30 years, and they’ve traveled and toured extensively on the historic route.

In their program Sunday, Joyce Ausberger is going to detail her “favorite places in 13 states of the highway.”  Bob Ausberger plans to lead an audience discussion of “a vision for the Lincoln Highway in the future.” And they plan to collaborate on “how you can easily spend a week in Greene County while exploring the Lincoln Highway.”

They’ll display some of their favorite memorabilia and sourcebooks about the highway.

In addition, a new three-panel interactive display on the Lincoln Highway – developed for the Iowa Department of Transportation by the Prairie Rivers Association – will be available during and after the program.  The historical society has hosted that display during the month of June.

Lincoln Highway Traveling Exhibition Premiers at the 2022 Bell Tower Festival

AMES, Iowa, June 1, 2022 — An audiovisual exhibition telling the story of the national Lincoln Highway premiers at the Bell Tower Festival in Jefferson this year. Promise Road: How the Lincoln Highway Changed America opens June 9 at the Greene County Historical Society Museum and will remain through June 26.

“Many of us have driven the Lincoln Highway but haven’t realized its significance for the unfolding of our country’s modern history. This exhibition tells that story,” said Shellie Orngard, the Lincoln Highway Heritage Byway coordinator.

The building of the Lincoln Highway was initiated in 1913, when most people traveled by foot or by horse and the roads were mud or gravel. America’s first coast-to-coast highway, the Lincoln Highway starts in Times Square, New York City, and travels through 14 states, ending at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. A dramatic story of ingenuity, personality, and commerce, Promise Road will engage visitors in a new understanding of and appreciation of our forgotten past and what it means for us today.

The exhibition culminates with a presentation on June 26 by Bob and Joyce Ausberger of rural Greene County, who helped found the new national Lincoln Highway Association in 1992, which now has hundreds of members across the country and around the world.

After this first stop in Greene County, the exhibition will travel to Marshall and Story counties, and on to the rest of the 13 Iowa counties traversed by the Lincoln Highway Heritage Byway.

The traveling exhibit Promise Road: How the Lincoln Highway Changed America was funded in part by a grant from the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs and with support from the Iowa Department of Transportation.

In 2021, the Lincoln Highway Heritage Byway in Iowa was recognized as a National Scenic Byway. The National Scenic Byways Program is a voluntary, community-based program administered through the United States Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to recognize, protect, and promote America’s most outstanding roads. 

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    There have been three courthouses built where the Greene County Courthouse stands today.  Ground was broken on the current courthouse in November of 1915, the cornerstone was set in May 1916 and the new building was dedicated in October of 1917. The centennial celebration of the courthouse is already underway, with events being planned by the “Courthouse 100” committee, with support from the Greene County Historical Society.  You can learn more about the courthouse history and the celebration plans on the Facebook page “Courthouse 100: Greene County, Iowa.”

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