Kathy Jordan, a volunteer with Fort Fred Steele State Historic Site, advised our Lincoln Highway tour group to take our time and watch our step, as we headed down a steep strip of rock-studded dirt that was once part of the historic cross-country road in the early 1920s.

The rocks are smooth, rounded, and sit well above ground. Stepping on them bends our feet in two directions at once. The sizes of the rocks were odd, ranging from duck eggs to baseballs.

They seemed an interesting choice for the nation’s first coast-to-coast automobile highway, a 3,000-plus-mile route that began in New York and ended in California.

But the rocks would have been an upgrade for the times. Prior to the Lincoln Highway’s construction in 1913, most of the nation’s roads were plain dirt: bumpy, dusty and all

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