The Lincoln Highway through Mishawaka: Lincolnway, 1913, and the route's departure

1913-1998 · THE NAMED ROUTE AND THE NUMBERED ONE

The 1913 course: 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 annotation names the principal towns; the Historical Marker Database's town list for the highway places Mishawaka in its order on the road, between Osceola and South Bend, on the run from Goshen and Elkhart. Through Mishawaka the highway was designated Lincolnway in 1913, on the National Register record for Fire Station No. 4 — the name the street carries to this day, Lincolnway East and Lincolnway West, the city's spine. The highway's Indiana association promoted and marked the route until the association dissolved in the early 1940s; the Indiana portion was designated an Historic Scenic Byway in 2011.

The departure and the number: The named route did not stay. The Historical Bureau's annotation records the 1928 shift in the route that avoided South Bend — the realignment that took the Lincoln Highway off the Osceola-Mishawaka-South Bend course altogether. What stayed was the pavement and the number: the old highway through the two cities became US 20, which the Indiana State Highway Commission began signing in 1926, and US 20 ran through downtown Mishawaka on the Lincoln Highway's course — a section of which, east toward Elkhart, is still known as Lincoln Way — until the St. Joseph Valley Parkway took the through traffic around. The end of the downtown course is dated two ways in the record and both stand: the Parkway's Indiana portion was complete in 1992 (the next entry), while the highway history of US 20 in Indiana dates the decommissioning of the downtown route to 1998, when the state finished the Parkway project. The old road through Mishawaka is signed today as Business US 20 in St. Joseph County, on the road record — the Lincoln Highway's course demoted to a business loop, still carrying the city's own traffic on the alignment of 1913.

Sources:

1. Indiana Historical Bureau, marker 71.2010.1, "Lincoln & Dixie Highways," with its annotation — the route announced 13 September 1913; the original Indiana course through Fort Wayne, Elkhart, South Bend, LaPorte and Valparaiso; the 1928 shift that avoided South Bend.
2. Historical Marker Database, Lincoln Highway record — the 1913 route's Indiana towns in order, Osceola, Mishawaka and South Bend among them.
3. National Park Service, National Register nomination, Mishawaka Fire Station No. 4 — the Lincoln Highway designated Lincolnway through the city in 1913.
4. Indiana Lincoln Highway Association, byway guide — the 1913 route on US 33 to South Bend and along US 20 and IN 2; the association's dissolution in the early 1940s; the Historic Scenic Byway designation of 2011.
5. Wikipedia, "U.S. Route 20 in Indiana" — the Lincoln Way section as part of the 1913 Lincoln Highway; US 20 signed from 1926; the downtown course until the St. Joseph Valley Parkway, decommissioned in 1998 (date printed beside the Parkway's 1992 completion in the next entry).
6. Roadfan, "Routes in South Bend and Metro Northern Indiana" — Business US 20 posted in St. Joseph County along the old route.