By Mike Hazlip—
Before 1913, a patchwork of country roads crisscrossed Citrus Heights as well as much of the country, until businessman Carl G. Fisher began an effort to unite them into the first transcontinental highway, allowing drivers to travel from San Francisco all the way to New York City.
Citrus Heights Historical Society President Larry Fritz told The Sentinel that one of those old country roads, now known as Auburn Boulevard, ran along a path in Citrus Heights used by freight wagons as far back as 1849. At that time, the road ran straight to the city of Auburn, until 1864 when the Central Pacific Railroad reached Roseville, Fritz said.
Half a century later, that road became part of the Lincoln Highway –the first highway developed for the automobile, and made long distance road trips possible for the first time in history, according to information published by the Lincoln Highway Association.
A digital map published by the association traces the original Lincoln Highway along what is now Auburn Boulevard. The map shows Lincoln Highway making a bend to the north where it connects Roseville, Auburn, Reno, and points further East.
The project initially had little funding, and Fritz believes this may be the reason for connecting existing roadways instead of building new roads.
“With only private money, they did not have the financing to build roads, so they pieced together existing roads, such as Auburn Blvd., in order to form a route that would allow people to drive from New York City to San Francisco,” he said.
At that time the Lincoln Highway Association published maps and travel guides to encourage drivers to venture out across the U.S., Fritz said. A documentary published by the Wyoming Public Broadcast System in 2014 marking 100 years since the project began, shows that travel along the Lincoln Highway was treacherous in the early days. Roads ran across ditches, dilapidated bridges, rail road tracks, and cattle grazing lands.
While connecting existing county roadways to form a transcontinental highway worked, historical records show it left drivers with a confusing maze of road names and highway markers. In 1926, Fritz said the California Department of Transportation numbered the highways, and Lincoln Highway became Highway 40.
Further improvements came when the army sent a convoy to explore the highway in 1919, records show. Among the troops was a young Dwight D. Eisenhower, a lieutenant colonel at the time. The expedition convinced the government that paved roads were necessary, and soon after, federal, state, and local governments began funding the construction of paved roads.
Newer, faster routes were soon under construction across the country by 1927, and an effort was made to mark the original route of the first transcontinental roadway.
“In 1927, the Boy Scouts of America, knowing that the Lincoln Highway was going away, memorialized it by installing 3,000 concrete markers coast to coast along the route,” Fritz said. “These markers featured the official emblem of the Lincoln Highway, a bronze relief of President Abraham Lincoln and an arrow to show the direction that the highway took at the location of each marker.”
Highway 40 was then replaced by Interstate 80 in 1956 when CalTrans built a new roadway from the Marconi Curve to the Atlantic Street overcrossing in Roseville, bypassing Auburn Boulevard completely. At that time, the trail that began as Auburn Road, then Lincoln Highway, then Highway 40, was finally renamed Auburn Boulevard. The bend in the road however remains.
Today, the bend in that old country road is known as Sylvan Corners and marks the geographic center of Citrus Heights. Auburn Boulevard, Old Auburn Road, and Sylvan Road all come together at the intersection.
Pedestrians familiar with the intersection will know there is a marker that still stands, commemorating the road’s history. It is an exact reproduction of the original markers placed by the Boy Scouts in 1927, Fritz says.
Also standing in tribute to the area’s history are concrete benches installed by the City of Citrus Heights in the early 2000s at the intersection of Auburn Boulevard and Antelope Road. The benches have lettering that reads “Lincoln 40” to commemorate the city’s own section of the first transcontinental highway, and mark a piece of history in the city.
By Mike Hazlip—
Before 1913, a patchwork of country roads crisscrossed Citrus Heights as well as much of the country, until businessman Carl G. Fisher began an effort to unite them into the first transcontinental highway, allowing drivers to travel from San Francisco all the way to New York City.
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