The Lincoln Highway ran through South Bend: 1913 to 1928

1913–1928 · THE ORIGINAL MAIN LINE

The record must be printed against a natural assumption: The Lincoln Highway's main line did not pass south of South Bend in its first fifteen years. It ran through the middle of this city. The route announced on 13 September 1913 — the South Bend Tribune carried it that day, the New York Times on the 14th — crossed Indiana through Fort Wayne, Elkhart, South Bend, LaPorte and Valparaiso, and the Indiana Historical Bureau's marker annotation states it without qualification: "The original route through Indiana passed through Fort Wayne, Elkhart, South Bend, LaPorte, and Valparaiso." The line entered St. Joseph County from Elkhart on the old Vistula Road — at Ash Road the original route continued straight on what is still called Vistula Road, though parts "have been lost to flood plain and development" — and followed the river road through Osceola and Mishawaka, both boundary ground for this section, on Lincolnway.

Entering South Bend, Lincolnway curves along the river, passes the Edgewater district and becomes Monroe Street; the original line reached Washington Street at a T. At Washington and Michigan the highway crossed the Dixie Highway, and the two trails' crossing is the subject of the marker at the southwest corner — the subject of the next entry but one. West of downtown the highway ran out Washington Street and Lincolnway West past the airport, where a remnant of the original road survives preserved on the airport grounds, and on to New Carlisle — where, the Lincoln Highway Association's guide notes, the street is called Michigan Street "because it runs with the Michigan Road Historic Byway": the 1913 auto trail following the 1829 wagon road out of town, as it had followed it in.

Local improvement of the trail began the region's permanent-road era: Elkhart County let a concrete contract for the highway in 1915, and on 10 August 1915 a one-half mile concrete roadway was opened to traffic in St. Joseph County which the Tribune recorded "marked the real beginning of permanent road building in northern Indiana"; the township's residents had voted bonds for it. The downtown course itself no longer exists: the original line along the river was removed in two stages a lifetime later, when the building of Century Center in 1974 bent it along Wayne Street to Michigan Street and its truncation to Monroe Street in 1976 made room for Karl King Tower, opened 1978. In 1928 the Lincoln Highway was realigned onto the straighter southern line — the line of present US 30, through Plymouth and Warsaw to Fort Wayne — and South Bend's fifteen years on the main line ended. The southern route's priority in later memory has sometimes been read backward into 1913; the marker record, the 1913 announcements and the Association's own turn-by-turn guide all put the original line here, and this section prints them.

Sources:

1. Indiana Historical Bureau, marker 71.2010.1 (Lincoln Highway / Michigan Road / Dixie Highway, southwest corner of Michigan and Washington, South Bend; installed 2010) and its annotation — the original route through Fort Wayne, Elkhart, South Bend, LaPorte and Valparaiso; the route announced 13 September 1913 (South Bend Tribune, 13 September 1913; New York Times, 14 September 1913); the 1928 shift that avoided South Bend; the Elkhart County concrete contract and the St. Joseph County half-mile of concrete opened 10 August 1915 (South Bend Tribune, 14 August 1915), voted by township bond.
2. Indiana Lincoln Highway Association, turn-by-turn guide to the 1913 route (westbound volume, 2024) — the Vistula Road entry at Ash Road and its losses to flood plain and development, the Osceola and Mishawaka Lincolnway course, the Monroe Street entry into South Bend, the Edgewater district, the preserved remnant on the airport grounds, and Michigan Street through New Carlisle running with the Michigan Road Historic Byway; the guide's own summary that the 1913 route "was on US 30 through Fort Wayne, on US 33 to South Bend, along US 20 and IN 2 to Valparaiso," and the 1928 route "much more aligned with US 30."
3. Jim Grey's survey of the 1913 Lincoln Highway in St. Joseph County, from the Association's map data — the original downtown path by Wayne Street and Pearl Avenue to the Washington Street T, its 1974 redirection for Century Center and 1976 truncation to Monroe Street for Karl King Tower (opened 1978).