Customer Reviews

Greetings From The Lincoln Highway: America's First Coast-to Coast Road

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I cannot say enough GOOD THINGS about this book! It is beautifully written, and is lavishly filled with truly historic photographs and memorabilia. From start to finish, the reader is taken on a road trip from the past. After reading this book, I want to travel like crazy, and visit the obscure little places that have been so overlooked since the formation of the interstate system. You will not be disappointed in this book...worth every penny! A one word review for 'Greetings from the Lincoln Highway'? ..... DELIGHTFUL!

Here it is. If you're looking for a terrific guide to places and people along the Lincoln Highway, past and present, you can't find a better guide than this book. Plenty of images, maps, postcards, and other memorabilia place this resource among the very best of roadside guides. Use it for historical research. Use it for trip planning. Use it for armchair tourism. Either way, you'll be glad you bought this book.

Having lived in a city that the Lincoln Highway has passed through for all of my 70 years, I found the book to be a delightful trip down memory lane. The numerous photographs give a wonderful feel for the time when the highway was in its prime and used by millions traveling coast to coast. The book is well laid out and organized and a treat to read, whether you want to browse for a few minutes or do an in-depth read for the couple of hours it would take you to go cover to cover.

Ever wonder what it would have been like to have driven across the country in the early part of the 20th Century, before roads were regularly paved or well-marked? You can get a glimpse of what early travelers faced on the first transcontinental highway by reading Greetings From The Lincoln Highway by Brian Butko.

The book starts off by telling the history of the Lincoln Highway, from its inception and promotion by Carl Fisher and Henry Joy to its eventual replacement by numbered Federal highways. Most of the remainder of the book describes the route of the old highway going west from New York City to its end in San Francisco. The route is described in great detail, enough for one to use it in driving it today. Throughout the text, there are excerpts from the journals and letters of early travelers of the highway. We drivers of today can be glad we don't have to put up with the conditions they faced.

If you are a fan of the historic roadways; if you want ideas for future vacations; if you want to experience life off of the Interstates -- this book is for you.

Think Route 66 is America's oldest or first coast-to-coast road? Well, it gets more publicity, but Route 66 wasn't the first: the Lincoln Highway predates it by a dozen years, runs a third longer, and travels coast to coast. Greetings From The Lincoln Highway: America's First Coast-to-Coast Road provides a lively highway history, packing in the maps which depict the original highway and its changes from state to state, the color photos of local color and highway scenery, and of course the all-important history of the highway's past. From vintage posters and ads to restored old stations and services, Butko' Greetings From The Lincoln Highway follows the highway across the country and provides a very colorful, compelling story in the process.

This book is an excellent reference for the entire Lincoln Highway. Some of the state-specific books may have more detail, but none are easier to follow. It is very well written- flows easily, lots of good pictures. I wish we had this one when we traveled part of it.

Excellent, well-written book that manages to give you lots of photos along with tons of solid, well-researched info on the Lincoln Highway. But that doesn't make it dry. Mr. Butko writes in a breezy style and has an obvious love for his subject. Before the summer is over, get ahold of this and hit the road!

Brian Butko has done it again! His insights and knowledge of this subject will make you feel like you are travelling with him as he goes from state to state, exploring all the different paths and alignments that were designated as the Lincoln Highway over the years. Pointing out sights, roadside attractions and businesses along the way. I personally have travelled some of the eastern portion of this historic road without knowing it at the time.

When this book caused me to miss the first 20 minutes of a great Super Bowl (and at that, the only snaps I saw all season), I figured I owed it a review here at Amazon.

Brian Butko has indeed done for the Lincoln Highway just what Michael Wallis & Tom Snyder had previously accomplished back in the 90s on behalf of the Mother Road, Old Route 66.

And like Route 66, the future of the LH is tenuous at best -- after all, there is no longer any such US 66 or Lincoln Highway (though US 30 & 50 survive) -- with what remnants remaining in either case serving the nation in any capacity even remotely close to what they handled in their primes.

So not unlike the current state of American roots music (the Blues & Jazz which flourished in the same relative timeframe), these highways are certainly "History" (i.e., celebrations of pasts that are indeed "over") as dictated by the efforts to save not only the roadbeds themselves but the infrastructure they supported (e.g., the neon, the mom-and-pop stands, and assorted kitsch) -- and by definition, that inseparable longing for the simpler times aptly represented. Certainly, without the maintenance of a critical mass of such relics, all indeed will be lost.

Fortunately for both historic highways, that hasn't happened as of yet, and Mr. Butko proves it in the case of the Lincoln Hwy thru a great, grand collage of roadside photos, details, and relevant maps regarding a still-impressive string of living museums (as well as scattered ruins in various states of disrepair) from New York City to San Francisco. Obviously, there is even more left of the Lincoln than there is of Old 66.

And then there are the often-gripping tales rehashed by the author: the real meat of his work lying in the telling of the chaotic formative days of the highway, complemented by a nicely selected array of earliest-bird journals and correspondence of some who braved the trip way, way back in the nine-teens and the 1920s.

Talk about daring, Holy Cow! Back then, one would have been nothing short of crazed--maybe even just plain nuts--to have traveled as such, though I won't divulge the dirty details here as you'll have to try this book to find out for yourself.

But again, despite the logistical hardships it's ultimately the portrayal of those simpler times, the immediacy of traveling and the ability to "be in the present moment" that take the cake throughout, as concisely summarized rather haiku-like on pg. 7:

"There (is) plenty of nothing out here for sure,
this is the way it looks for sure.
Everything is OK."

Imagine that! No camera phones, no laptops, no iPads or iPods, no tweets or GPS ... or, as they say at the LHHC website, "Forget Mapquest, and leave the Garmin at home."

Now THAT'S what I call an adventure.

p.s. -- As I'm sure the author himself states somewhere, this work is NOT to be used as a hands-on travel guide, rather, a sequel of sorts to handle all of that is available, though I've not yet seen it.

All of Brian Butko's books are well worth owning, but this one is my absolute favorite! It's filled with wonderful photos - including lots of terrific ephemera - and it's incredibly well-written.