This
is one of several stories in the
November 2005 issue of
folio:
Finding the
Lincoln HIghway
in California–11
Gregory M.
Franzwa
Photos by Gregory and Kathy Franzwa
The lead story in our issue of
August 2005 explained how there are four branches of the Lincoln
Highway in California. That story covered the historic highway from
Verdi, Nevada, over the Dog Valley Road, past Truckee and over
Donner Pass to Sacramento. Much of that road is close to I-80. This
story will take us over the second leg, still the 1913-27 route,
from Sacramento on through Stockton, Hayward, Oakland, and across
the bay to San Francisco. (Our new book,
The Lincoln Highway: California,
will be ready in late winter or early spring. To follow the route
now, access MapQuest on the web, or a California state highway map.)
Thursday, May 26, 2005
A logical starting place
for this leg is the California state capitol building, Capitol and
15th Streets.
Proceeding to the southeast we crossed beneath CA 99 to 30th Street.
There we turned right for about three blocks to our major street,
Stockton Boulevard.
The California State
Capitol
Now the road passes
through California’s fertile (and burning hot) Central Valley.
Virtually impossible for us to get lost, as Bob Dieterich programmed
his new Garmin GPS unit to take us all the way. Miss just one turn
and some electronic woman tucked away in the thing yells at you.
Along the way the
Lincoln is partly beneath Stockton Boulevard and partly beneath the
northbound lanes of CA 99. California boosters in the l920s wanted
to do something special to beau- tify their Lincoln in the
valley—they planted miles and miles of black walnut trees along
either side of the road, and some of those trees have survived to
the present day.
While the new book will
present a precise driving guide to enable the traveler to follow the
historic highway all along the way, for purposes of the folio
story only general directions are given. Elk Grove County Park is
about halfway between Sacramento and Galt (9941 Stockton Road, to
narrow it down). The Elk Grove Hotel and Stage Stop stands on the
north edge of the park, encircled by a chain link fence. The
historic building was moved here from a site about 100 yards farther
west, where it had stood since 1860. It is open for tours on the
first Saturday of every month, from noon to four o’clock.
The Elk Grove Hotel and
Stage Stop
About a mile and one-half
south we turned on Grant Line Road to cross CA 99 and continued
southeast on what is now Stockton Road West. (We’ll encounter the
name Grant Line Road several times along the way, and it probably
shouldn’t be capitalized—“Grant line” is the name given to land
grant boundary lines, surveyed from Mount Diablo.) Within a block or
two we were forced up on CA 99.
We left the highway at
the Twin Cities road to continue south on Stockton West, and again a
fine stand of black walnut trees shades the exit ramp. We wanted a
glimpse of the pristine 1913 Lincoln Highway, so we pulled off the
road to the left just a block ahead—there is the broken concrete,
probably poured in the late teens or early twenties.
We drove ahead into the
town of Galt—right on the original Lincoln Highway. We pulled over
at A Street, in the center of town. There, imbedded in a rubble
stone marker, is a slab of the 1924 Lincoln Highway concrete, and
above it, a plaque explaining it all. Unlike so many Lincoln Highway
cities, Galt is mindful of its place in the history of America’s
best-known historic trans- continental highway.
We continued south, and
the street becomes Lower Sacramento Road. Now we are heading into
the town of Woodbridge. We noted Woodbridge Feed and Fuel right in
the center of town. You won’t be able to buy fuel in the 1860
building but you sure can buy people feed there, if you have enough
money. It did a commendable job of feeding Lincoln Highway travelers
from 1913 through 1926.
We crossed over the
Mokelumne River, made famous during the gold rush of 1849-60, and
after a couple more turns found ourselves back on Lower Sacramento
Road. We passed the old Henderson School, now boarded up. Not hard
to imagine the hordes of Model
T
Fords passing there, waving at the beknickered kids out for recess.
Those kids, like kids all along the three thousand miles of the
Lincoln Highway west of New York, would have caught a glimpse of the
license plates, and could well have had a fun geography lesson out
of it.
We drove on into
Stockton, finding our way to Weber Street and the ship channel.
Ship channel? Yep. Looking at the California highway map one can
see that Stockton is some seventy or eighty miles east of the
Pacific Ocean. The city, 40,296 people in 1924, lies at the head of
navigation of the San Joaquin River. And that turning basin appears
to be sufficiently spacious to accommodate the QEII.
Straight ahead is another
phenomenon—Hotel Stockton. One of the most magnificent hotels in
America, it has been wonderfully restored to its appearance in
Lincoln Highway days. There are two such buildings along this
route—both utterly fascinating in their architectural magnificence.
Hotel Stockton
We thought that
Woodbridge Feed and Fuel restaurant would be a good place to feed
ourselves this night. Elegant it is. And the food is elegant as
well. But with about twice what that dinner cost the four of us, we
could have bought a brand new Ford in 1913.
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