Decatur Road and the Lincoln Highway — the highway-era paths

THE SOUTH AND THROUGH DOWNTOWN · DECATUR ROAD (U.S. 27/U.S. 33) AND THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY ROUTES

Two named highways of the auto-trail era still structure the south and east sides. Decatur Road is the southeast diagonal: the road from Fort Wayne to Decatur, in the trail era the path of the Ohio-Indiana-Michigan Way, the Cincinnati-to-Kalamazoo auto trail, and from the Great Renumbering of October 1, 1926, U.S. 27 (built on old State Roads 21 and 13), joined south of the city by U.S. 33 out of Ohio. The road enters Fort Wayne as a four-lane divided highway, sheds U.S. 33 at the I-469 interchange, and continues as Decatur Road past farmland and houses until, at Anthony Boulevard, its name changes to Lafayette Street and the highway becomes the downtown one-way pair treated in the Clinton Street entry. It is the one federal highway that still runs through the city between the interstates rather than on them.

The Lincoln Highway crossed the whole city, twice, on two alignments. The 1913–1915 route came in from New Haven along New Haven Avenue and Maumee Street, followed Washington Boulevard and Jefferson through downtown, crossed the St. Marys on the Harrison Street bridge by Memorial Park, and left northwest through Five Points on Goshen Avenue (the Goshen entry carries that junction). The 1928 realignment straightened the line onto what became U.S. 30: in Goshen Road from the northwest, through the city on the Washington/Jefferson pair, and out Washington Boulevard and Lincoln Highway east into New Haven — the alignment SR 930 still shields on its eastern leg. The Indiana Lincoln Highway Association's byway guides document both routes turn by turn; the City marked the 1915 route with about 30 signs in a mayoral unveiling at the Lincoln Highway Bridge, and a 1928 Boy Scout concrete marker stands at the Visit Fort Wayne control station at Harrison and Washington. The Lincoln Highway in Fort Wayne is no longer a road you take; it is a pair of lines across the street map that the corridors above still follow.

Sources: Indiana Transportation History, Allen County state-road record (1917–1926) and "The Ohio-Indiana-Michigan Way" (Decatur Road); AARoads, U.S. Route 27 and U.S. Route 30 in Indiana; Indiana Lincoln Highway Association byway guides and ACGSI, Lincoln Highway in Allen County (1915 route signing; Harrison Street bridge).