The named trail and the numbers: Lincoln Highway, State Road 2, U.S. 20

1913–1928 and after

In 1913 the Michigan Road through New Carlisle became a marked mile of the first transcontinental highway.Joseph County mile 25.6, "The Lincoln Highway curves to the left under a railroad viaduct and enters New Carlisle. The route is called Michigan St through New Carlisle because it runs with the Michigan Road Historic Byway (from 1829) through this area" — past the Jeremiah Service House of 1860, "perhaps better known today as the Old Republic," at mile 25.9, and out Michigan Street and U.S. 20 to County Line Road at mile 27.0. The Association states the 1913 Indiana route as running "along US 20 and IN 2 to Valparaiso": this length carried the Lincoln Highway from 1913 until the highway's Indiana realignment onto the U.S. 30 line, which the record dates two ways — the U.S. Route 20 account says the Lincoln Highway was rerouted to U.S. 30 in 1926, while the Association's guide works to a 1928 date — and both dates print, unmerged, here as in the Story of New Carlisle section. The numbered succession on the street runs: State Road 2 in Indiana's first state numbering, the number the corridor carried in the 1910s–20s (its present course begins far west of here, its west end meeting U.S. 20 at Rolling Prairie); then U.S. 20, designated with the federal system of 1926 and carried on Michigan Street through the town to this day. West of town U.S. 20 runs four-lane through Hudson Lake and on into La Porte County; east of town it runs to South Bend. The street's own widths print as their carriers give them — one hundred feet in the plat dedication of 1835, forty-five feet as the National Register nomination measures the present street — and the modern byway designations ride on the same pavement: the Michigan Road is today a designated historic byway, and the Lincoln Highway marker standing before Town Hall at 124 East Michigan Street carries the street's most dangerous mile into the next article.

Principal sources: Indiana Lincoln Highway Association, the 1913-route turn-by-turn guide; the National Register nomination for the New Carlisle Historic District (reference 92001653); this build's spine (the SR 2 and U.S. 20 course, at the strengths there printed).