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1913–1928 · THE ORIGINAL MAIN LINE ON THE VISTULA ROAD
For fifteen years the most famous road in America was this city's main east–west street: The Lincoln Highway was announced on 13 September 1913, and its original route across Indiana ran through Fort Wayne, Elkhart, South Bend, LaPorte and Valparaiso — the Indiana Historical Bureau's marker annotation names the principal towns, and the highway's town lists place Mishawaka in its order on the road, between Osceola and South Bend. Through Mishawaka the highway was designated Lincolnway in 1913, on the National Register record for Fire Station No. 4 — Second Street renamed for the road it carried, and the name has outlasted every designation since: Lincolnway East and Lincolnway West, divided at Main Street, remain the street's names today. The course was the Vistula Road's, with one forced departure the road record explains: the highway followed the old Vistula Road west from Elkhart until the road was cut by Baugo Bay — the 1903 damming of Baugo Creek, just past the county line, had drowned the old line — so at the county line the highway turned briefly south along the border and came through Osceola on the present State Road 933 line to Mishawaka, rejoining the valley road; west of Mishawaka it stayed on the Vistula Road into South Bend, entering that city on the Wayne Street and Pearl Avenue course this build's South Bend Corridors record carries. The Indiana Lincoln Highway Association promoted and marked the route until the association dissolved in the early 1940s.
The departure: The named route did not stay. The Historical Bureau's annotation records the 1928 shift that avoided South Bend — the realignment onto the straighter southern line, the line of present US 30 through Plymouth and Warsaw, that took the Lincoln Highway off the Osceola–Mishawaka–South Bend course altogether and ended the city's fifteen years on the main line. A variant dating stands in the US 20 route record, which puts the Lincoln Highway's rerouting to the US 30 line in 1926; the two are printed together, the Bureau's 1928 followed here as the marker record's date. What stayed behind was the pavement, the number that followed it (the next entry), and the name: the street is Lincolnway still, and the 1913 route through Indiana was designated an Historic Scenic Byway in 2011, with the Lincoln Highway Association's turn-by-turn guide to the 1913 route in print for the driving of it — its Mishawaka direction running, as it did in 1913, down the middle of this city. One claim is kept at the record's strength: a survey of the route notes of Mishawaka's street that it is "a significant road through town, but it's not the main street — that duty falls to Main Street, which intersects the Lincoln Highway here." Lincolnway is the city's spine east–west; Main Street, the next entries' subject, is its main street, and the record keeps the two dignities separate.
Sources:
- Indiana Historical Bureau, marker 71.2010.1 annotation — the route announced 13 September 1913, the original Indiana course, and the 1928 shift that avoided South Bend.
- National Park Service, National Register nomination, Mishawaka Fire Station No. 4 — the Lincoln Highway designated Lincolnway through the city in 1913, as carried in this build's Transit section.
- Indiana Lincoln Highway Association, turn-by-turn guide to the 1913 route, and Jim Grey's survey of the 1913 route in St. Joseph County (2025–26), from the Association's map data — the county-line entry on present State Road 933, the Baugo Bay detour and its 1903 cause, the Osceola course, and the Main Street observation quoted.
- Wikipedia, "U.S. Route 20 in Indiana" — the 1926 rerouting date for the Lincoln Highway to the US 30 line, printed against the Bureau's 1928.
- This build's Transit section — the association's dissolution in the early 1940s and the Historic Scenic Byway designation of 2011; this build's South Bend Corridors record — the Wayne Street and Pearl Avenue entry into South Bend.