♪♪ It's an American tradition.

Come summertime, we love to hit the road.

It's an idea that really began in the 1800s.

And after the wagons gave way to the steam engines, and then the automobile appeared on the scene, well, there was no turning back.

[Bruce Blevins] It's the way to see America.

- For so many generations, that first cross-country trip behind the wheel has been a rite of passage.

But long before the interstates, and even the fabled Route 66, there was just this ribbon of mud and gravel cut straight across the country, from the zero marker at the White House to the hills of San Francisco.

♪♪ This was the first road across America.

[Moe Mohanna] It connects us.

[Gregg Merksamer] An astounding adventure.

[Bill Oudegeest] The first highway crossing of the continental United States.

- Imagine what it must have been like to drive this old highway with the rock and the gravel.

♪♪ Up the mountains of Pennsylvania, bouncing atop the red brick of Ohio.

[Lt. Dan McCluskey] You get that harmonic vibration and, oh, it just brings chills up the back.

- Through the trees of Indiana farm country, past an old gas pump in Nebraska.

[Frank Logan] There was no road.

They were just following farm roads.

- A crumbling motor lodge in Wyoming.

Across the Utah and Nevada desert, what they still call "the loneliest road in America," and over the Sierra.

A century later, they are all saving Americana, once again rolling across "The Great Lincoln Highway."

♪♪ - Everybody up!

- All aboard!

- Flaps are open, generator are on.

- Line up!

- We copy you down Eagle.

♪♪ [Jay Johnson] You really see the countryside.

[Trey Pitsenberger] The Lincoln Highway is kind of your roadbed to the past.

[Gregg Merksamer] You get to see real America.

[Lorna Hainsworth] It's a wonderful way to enjoy our country.

[Paul Gilger] It gives us an opportunity to do slow travel, take your time, savor the moment.

Rediscover America.

[Lorna] You don't want to miss anything on any of these old roads.

They are a treasure.

[Matt Liverani] What really draws me to the Lincoln Highway is its history I can touch.

[Norm Sayler] If you look, it's all right there.

[Paul] A lot can be learned off of road trips, and one of the least is just the appreciation of America.

- The highway was the idea of entrepreneur Carl Fisher, who had just built the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and Henry Joy, the president of the Packard Car Company, who came up with the idea of naming the road after Abraham Lincoln, thinking it would have great patriotic appeal across the country.

First laid out in 1913, the highway really captured the imagination of the nation in 1919.

World War One was over, and a large convoy of military vehicles and troops was following the road clear across America.

- The U.S. military wanted to know if they could get vehicles across the country, what the roads were like out west, so they put this convoy together that started at the White House and they drove all the way to Lincoln Park in San Francisco.

The first real convoy across the U.S., it was publicized in advance.

There were crowds lining the roads along the way to cheer the people on.

- And right there, among the 39 officers and hundreds of others, a young lieutenant colonel from Kansas- Dwight D. Eisenhower.

This great adventure, you know, jumped into it with a lot of enthusiasm.

And what big news it was.

They had receptions and parades in every town.

- Between the breakdowns, the accidents, the dust of the desert and the mud of the plains, he began to dream, and four decades later, created the interstate highway system.

[Timothy] So, you can really see how that history unfolded through Eisenhower's experiences.

[Paul Gilger] It was the inspiration for Eisenhower to sign the Interstate Highway Act of 1956.

[Voice on Two Way radio] Two minutes to first gear.

- A hundred years later, a new military convoy is retracing his journey.

[Frank Logan] We're reproducing the 1919 convoy, knowing what they went through just to get this far, how hard it was for them once they got into Nebraska, with no roads.

[Michael] Out west, people describe the roads as two ruts across the prairie.

- All across America, they are working to save those ruts, retelling the stories, revisiting the early years of America's first transcontinental road.

[Dennis Boots] They come out by the hundreds.

[Jim Diamond] Tons of people on the side of the road, little kids, whole families, it's overwhelming what you see all the way across the country.

♪♪ - In the 1800s, road building was slow, backbreaking work.

Behind a team of draft horses pulling ancient grading equipment, thousands of workers went about taming the mountains and the plains, midwest farm country and East Coast forests.

All across the young nation, they toiled to build the first network of roads.

[Sound of steam whistle] In Boonville, Missouri, we get a feel for the old road building days.

Each year, history flashes before our eyes at the Missouri Valley Steam Engine Show.

[Earl Holler] There is a certain group of people that admire what used to be- and they come from far and wide- that like to see the old stuff.

- The parade of tractors tells the story of the early days.

Slowly, the tractors and road building equipment carved out the roads, crisscrossing the young country, pushing west into the last frontier.

But then, a new century brought change.

- The cars began coming off the assembly line at the rate of one every 40 seconds, and what Henry Ford had foreseen, happened.

Mass production and the assembly line drove the price of a Model T down from 850 to 300 dollars.

- In 1908, Henry Ford introduced the Model T, the first car for the masses.

[Bruce Blevins] It opened up America.

You didn't have to marry the girl next door.

You could marry the girl halfway across the country when you met her.

- In no time, everyone knew- these old dirt roads were not going to cut it much longer.

[Gregg] The interior of the country desperately needed better roads.

There was a lot of reason to pave the country, and things like the Lincoln Highway, this is where it really got started.

- Cities were paved with brick and cement, but rural America was a different story.

[Michael] There were a lot of troubles out west.

- Michael Owen has traveled the Lincoln Highway numerous times and wrote the book “After Ike ” about the historic road and the military convoy of 1919.

[Michael] It was really a difficult way to get across the country.

- In 62 days and over 3200 miles, the convoy embraced the adventure of the trip, but cursed all of the faults of the road.

One of many accidents saw a truck flipped over in Fulton, Illinois.

Troops used muscle, rope, chains, and a few choice words to clean up the mess, a task that would be repeated all the way to California.

And by the time the convoy crossed the Mississippi, raced across Iowa and then reached Nebraska, they were met with a wall of mud.

Out here, it was hard to call these “roads ” and keep a straight face.

[Michael] West of Chicago, all the way down to Sacramento, they had a difficult time on the roads.

They got stuck, they broke down, they got stuck in the mud.

[Group yelling] Lincoln Highway!

- A century later, in the summer of 2019, Michael joined a group from the Lincoln Highway Association retracing the original journey.

[Jay Johnson] It's a 1931 Town Sedan.

[Gregg] Im driving a Lincoln on the Lincoln Highway.

- They began the trip in front of the White House.

[Jay] Saw the “mile zero ” marker.

- It was from this very point the early roads began, and were measured.

[Jay] Mustve been a hundred tourists around there.

None of them knew what that was.

Jay and Michael and the rest of the group then headed to Gettysburg, a sort of homage to President Eisenhower.

[Paul Gilger] Eisenhower is really the big focus of this tour.

Gettysburg, of course, was an extremely important part of his life.

- Paul is a member of the Lincoln Highway Association, an organization that goes back to the early 1900s, and along with many automakers, pushed the concept of a transcontinental road.

And with the economical Model T, more and more Americans hit that road.

[Bill Oudegeest] People traveling the Lincoln Highway, now theyre using that new sense of independence that came with automobiles.

-The Lincoln Highway was the possibility that you could get in the car yourself and head out on your own and see the great country.

- The route was the fastest way across the young nation, but it was really a connection of hundreds of smaller roads.

In Nebraska, travelers would run from one farm road to the next, an agonizing series of 90 degree turns.

[Frank Logan] Where we are now, all the zigs and zags, there was no road.

They were just following farm roads, and they were laid out on section lines.

- Organizers of the 2019 convoy did painstaking research to follow the exact route.

So, it was constant zigzags, just like the old days.

And back then, cars were constantly mixing it up with the trains.

[Frank] The Union Pacific got so tired of the accidents, with all the crossings of the railroad tracks, that they donated land for US 30 to keep the traffic off the railroad right of way.

- Further west, at California's Donner Pass, the cars shared the track with the trains, and that was just pure terror.

[Norm] Right at the end of tunnel six on the east side, where they came out there, they had a big sliding door in the wooden train sheds.

People would slide that door back and then they put their ear against the rail to see if a train was coming, ‘cause they had to travel about 150 feet on the railroad tracks to come out the other side.

- Across the plains, on that Union Pacific land, they build Highway 30, which got folks off the tracks, and even today gives you that feeling of the early days, when crossing America on this two lane road was a life-changing adventure.

In Sutherland, Nebraska, the mural paints a picture of a steady stream of Americans heading west in all sorts of ways.

And the community restored an old 1930s gas station.

One of the classics made to look like homes, to blend in with neighborhoods.

In Canton, Ohio, the signs mark the highway running right through downtown.

And in some places, you can still find the original brick.

On this stretch, you really will be riding on the old Lincoln Highway.

- Oh, gosh, it's like taking a step back in time.

Nothing like a nice concrete or asphalt roadbed we've got now.

You get that harmonic vibration from the red brick.

Oh, it just... it just brings chills up the back.

- In Fort Bridger, Wyoming, you'll find one of the old motor lodges along the highway, closed now, but preserved to give us a flashback to the 1920s.

One of the most unique stretches is just outside Chicago.

In Dyer, Indiana, you'll find what's called “the ideal section.

” Road builders in 1921 created a one mile demonstration segment of what a modern highway should be like- four lanes, reinforced cement, no mud and a smooth ride.

It's still marked and celebrated today.

-We've become noted for having the Lincoln Highway and that monument, and people stop there, as well as school groups.

- You will see markings for the highway everywhere.

The large L tells you you're driving on history.

- Every time I see a Lincoln Highway marker, Id screech to a stop, or as best I could, and get out and take a picture of it.

[Camera shutter sounds] I am what youd call an “old roads person.

” [Trey] Supposedly, the road came back over there... - Right.

[Trey] ...and connected in right here.

- Trey and Monica Pitsenberger have traveled every mile on the highway in California, and are marking the old road with paint and stencils.

[Monica] We're just touching up.

- Here, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, they are painting one of the distinctive red, white and blue Ls.

[Trey] That's the idea with the signage.

It'll get people to wonder, what is that Lincoln Highway?

What are those L's on the bridge?

[Monica] It's kind of fun to paint, though.

I love painting.

- It's fun to mark the road and, uh, give people an opportunity to learn more about it.

[Moe Mohanna] My English professor said, “Go west, young man.

” ♪♪ - Perhaps no one is as passionate about saving this piece of American history as Moe Mohanna, who wasn't even born in America.

[Moe] It is in our roots.

You know, we come from a background that history, its important to us.

- He left Iran, becoming a real estate developer in California and, years ago, came upon the Lincoln Highway and has been fascinated by it ever since.

[Moe] Came here, above the oak grove.

- In El Dorado Hills is one of the most remarkable sections of highway, the original pavement cracked by time and cars, but looking so much like the old days.

So, he bought the land around the highway and hopes to build a development protecting it.

[Moe] My vision is that someday, the Lincoln Highway becomes a pedestrian walkway, conference center, museum, and this is the old wagon trail goes right through here.

- Here, one of the newest Americans dreams of saving the old America.

[Moe] Hopefully, someday, we will preserve this for our grandchildren.

- Just perhaps, this old road will do its magic again.

[Moe] And as it passes through different states, it connects us together.

[Trey] It was a route you could take, and it was signed.

That was the really neat thing, was the Ls were across the country, and you could actually get out on the road and follow this road all the way across the country.

- Even today, you can shut off your GPS and follow the signs clear across America, stumbling on one back road adventure after another.

In Utah's famed Echo Canyon, you can see the sign around almost every bend.

- Outside Ely, Nevada, you can walk or drive right down the original Lincoln Highway.

[Matt Liverani] It looks very much the same as it did back then.

- Matt Liverani has studied the sections of remaining road that snake across eastern Nevada.

[Matt] Ive poured over maps.

I've poured over photographs.

- Using archived historic images, he is marrying the old with the new.

You can follow the highway through downtown Ely, up Robinson Canyon, right alongside the steam engines of the Nevada Northern Railway, then west across Nevada on Highway 50, what they call “the loneliest road in America.

” [Matt] I enjoy history about anything, but what really draws me to the Lincoln Highway is its history I can touch.

- Outside Austin, Nevada, the pass looks pretty much like it did early on.

An emptiness of the long straightaways can leave you in a trance.

At Carrol Summit, the old road twists and turns through the Desatoya Mountains- a dramatic challenge for the modern convoy.

In a few hundred miles, the weary yet energized traveler climbs the Sierra Nevada and finally reaches California.

You would follow right in the path of earlier pioneers, cresting the Sierra over Donner Pass.

- These days, there are parts of the old Lincoln Highway you can find tucked away in the woods here, like this.

[Sound of Model T] - Rob Squire has brought his classic Model T onto a stretch of the road just below the pass.

You can find the original embankments and roadway.

[Bill] Oh, there's a sense of history there.

- Bill Oudegeest and Norm Saylor created the 20 Mile Museum at Donner Pass.

They have markers all along the road, a history lesson spread out for miles.

[Norm] The Donner Party made us world famous.

[Bill] Like supermarket tabloids, right.

That's the story that grabs you.

80 people trapped over the winter.

Half of them died.

There's cannibalism.

- Here, they tell the story of the most fascinating stretch of the Lincoln Highway, a sort of transportation funnel over the Sierra Nevada.

[Bill] Native Americans came through here.

[Norm] We had the first wagon trains go across here.

[Bill] The first transcontinental railroad.

[Norm] The Telegraph.

[Bill] The first transcontinental highway.

[Norm] Telephone lines.

- The first transcontinental air route, right over head.

[Norm] The Lincoln Highway.

[Bill] Old Highway 40.

[Norm] All that came right through that little square mile.

- But we almost lost this stretch of the Lincoln Highway.

The state considered taking down the Donner Pass Bridge, and by the late sixties, few people traveled this stretch, favoring the interstate.

[Norm] The old road disappeared with the freeway opening in 1964.

- Many folks don't even know the old route is still around.

[Norm] I think it's important to save any piece of history that we can.

- Bill and Norm and many others work so hard to protect the old road, and educating a new generation.

Work this day sees Norm running the backhoe and Bill swinging a chainsaw.

They are building a special marker for the old road.

[Chris Parker] Some call it a duck, a trail duck.

Uh, I call it a cairn.

You know, it emulates a lot of the trail markers that are up here on Donner Summit.

The neat part about it is that granite boulders are, you know, indicative of the big granite, you know, structures up here.

- You find these in the wilderness to identify trails.

Now, one of these cairns is helping a new generation find the famous road their grandparents traveled.

Ironically, the Eisenhower convoy missed Donner Summit, went over the Sierra at Echo Summit.

Still, the trip had a lasting impression on Eisenhower.

[Tim Rives] He's such an interesting figure.

Ike was born in 1890, the year the US Census Bureau declared the American frontier closed.

Then, he dies in 1969, the year, you know, men landed on the moon.

So, he really- He spans that era, from the horse and buggy age to the space age.

- At the newly remodeled Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas, you can see his boyhood home, the car he used in World War Two, the war table, where so many decisions were made.

But one of the more popular displays in the museum relives the 1919 cross-country trip, including his message to his superiors, “The roads varied from average to non-existent.

” [Tim] I don't think it's one of those events in American history that a lot of people are familiar with.

Once they learn about it, they're really intrigued.

Ike writes in his memoir, “At Ease, ” the purpose of the convoy was to look at the national road system, which everyone knew needed work, needed improvement.

So, he devotes an entire chapter to the convoy, and he doesnt to some of the major events in his presidency and World War Two.

So, I think that gives us an indication of how important it was to him.

- After his wintertime retirement to Palm Springs, he flashed back to that first trip to California in one of his last public speeches.

In the library's archives, we found the original copy of the speech, where he underlined “mud roads, ” and “broken springs.

” It's funny, the things presidents and old generals remember.

[Actor] “I first reached this state 43 years ago, in the late summer of 1919.

I had just finished a transcontinental trip with the first army truck convoy to run from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

After weeks of mud road and desert tracks, clogged up radiators and blown out tires, broken springs and missing road markers, California looked good to me.

” [Tim] Ike really did tend to reason from practical experience and this is just such a good case, of being on the convoy and that entering his mind, of just the general need for a good transportation system, then going to Germany and seeing the Autobahn and thinking, “Oh, this is what we need.

” And so, you can really see how that history unfolded, you know, through Eisenhower's experiences.

- And so, with a stroke of a pen in 1956, America got its interstate freeway system from the old soldier tired of muddy roads and blown out tires.

♪♪ Exactly a hundred years after Ike, a new convoy pulls into Lexington, Nebraska.

[Morris Waid] Trying to duplicate that in 2019.

- A group that restores old military vehicles was making the 3200 mile trek.

[Frank Logan] The Military Vehicle Preservation Association has got eight to ten thousand members, and they restore and collect military vehicles to keep the history alive.

- And they like to show these vehicles.

Some have been around since World War One.

Like the troops of 1919, they're on a mission, but they also have a lot of fun.

[Peter Hague] An absolute ball.

- Peter Hague and Mike Edridge have come from New Zealand.

[Mike] The steering wheels on the wrong side and we drive on the wrong side of the road, but apart from that, it's pretty good.

[Peter] Well, to be honest, both of us have escaped from our wives.

We've got a month and a half of wife freedom to start with.

We can party and drink and eat and do whatever we like for a month and a half.

And then, when we get back home, we're going to be stood to attention, so.

- They don't have air conditioning, few have power steering, and Tom Ryan shows us the really old wipers on this Jeep.

[Tom Ryan] We got hit by a huge storm.

The guy driving, I was trying to do this and it was irritating the driver.

And he said, “Ryan, you're not doing any good.

It's raining sideways.

” - They're taking a lunch break at the Heartland Museum of Military Vehicles, where others are saving history with wrenches and elbow grease.

- We could see what these vehicles meant to the memories of the men and women who served around them.

The World War Two Jeep moves the World War Two guys.

The helicopter moves the Vietnam guys.

The Desert Storm guys get moved by about anything.

♪♪ - After lunch, it's back on the road.

It's a long, rolling line of history out here.

[Truck horn blows] The public loves every minute, and the convoy really touches vets in the crowd.

[Steve Morton] That was the back of a Duce and a half.

- Steve Morton was in Vietnam.

[Steve] I went all over Vietnam in the back of one of those.

- Comfortable?

[Steve] No.

- Boy, does this parade take him back!

[Steve] Oh, my.

It brings back a whole, uh, raft of memories.

It's fun to see some of these things that have survived.

[Dan] This is the end of day 19.

- The convoy done for the day, the group holds a quick debrief and issues fines for various infractions.

[Peter] Kevin, uh, you were fraternizing with a midwest farmer's daughter when you received a visual phone call from your wife.

[Laughter] [Kevin] I was just showing her the map.

- The money goes to charity, and everyone gets a good belly laugh.

[Peter] You lost a flag out the window.

[Convoy member] You know, and I radioed everybody not to tell- I radioed everybody and told ‘em not to tell anybody.

[Laughter] - Come morning, we're back on the road as the sun comes up.

Jim Diamond, from New Jersey, is behind the wheel of a Gulf War vehicle.

[Jim Diamond] I dismantle Jeeps from World War Two all the way to present day, so it's nice to actually take the vehicles out, restore ‘em, and actually drive them down the road.

♪♪ - More of zigging and zagging.

And, of course, more people cheering on the convoy.

[Jim] Tons of people on the side of the road.

[Frank] That's one of the best things about these convoys, these small towns, the turnout, the school kids.

[People cheering and whistling] Heartwarming.

- This is small town America, the heartland.

[Dennis Boots] They come out by the hundreds to every one of our stopping points.

- You can just feel the spirit of Ike making the trip way back when.

[Michael Owen] About three and a half percent of the entire American population actually came out and witnessed the convoy.

Really a source of American pride.

[Dan Seybourg] People will come out of the woodwork.

- Dan Seybourg, the poet of the 2019 convoy, makes us smile about this adventure.

[Dan] I ain't never made a fortune, my hair is white, I'm old, but I wouldn't trade my memories for a whole heap of shining gold.

Whenever I get lonesome, I just hold a grand review, of people, places and military vehicles that I knew.

I can hear the songs and stories, feel the campfire blaze, as I relive the glory of our grand old convoying days.

[Dennis Boots] We honor our veterans, allowing them to bring their families out, to show their grandkids.

We just want them to make sure that the next generation understands what they went through.

I'm so afraid that we lose that, that they don't care.

- Out here, they're all helping us care, remembering the veterans, and one special groups fantastic road trip a century ago.

[Dennis] I've seen farmers at the end of a mile long lane come out and have a flag, and wave it as we go by.

♪♪ [Dan] The crowds are in the towns, the crowds will be in the rain, the crowds will be in the dark.

- Out here, they are saving Americana, reliving the journey, and reminding us these old roads have always helped bring us together.

Rolling across America on the Great Lincoln Highway, I'm Dave Courvoisier.

♪♪