The bypass: US 20 leaves the street

1991–1998 · the St. Joseph Valley Parkway

The through traffic that had defined Lincolnway for sixty years left it in two dated steps: the St. Joseph Valley Parkway took US 20 off the valley's main streets in sections — the section from US 31 to State Road 19 opened 11 December 1991, and the section from State Road 19 to County Road 17 opened 9 October 1992 — and from those openings the Chicago-to-the-east through stream ran south of Mishawaka and Osceola for good. The route histories date the formal end of the through-town US 20 designation to 1998. What the bypass did to the street is written in what the street still holds: Lincolnway kept its name, its houses, and its local trade, and lost the river of strangers that had passed its doors since the Lincoln Highway age — the Food leg's present map, a thirty-year house and a family diner standing on a state road in a town of 2,590, is the bypass's truest monument. The street's second life, as the town's own main street rather than the nation's, is the condition every later leg of this build is written in.

Sources:

1. St. Joseph Valley Parkway section-opening record (US 31 to SR 19, 11 December 1991; SR 19 to CR 17, 9 October 1992), read November 2026.
2. U.S. Route 20 in Indiana, route history (the through-city routing's formal decommissioning dated 1998), read November 2026.