Leaving Denver in the afternoon, we drove to Boulder; from Boulder to
Plattville and from Plattville due north to Greeley. All along to the
left, between Plattville and Greeley, we had fine views of the whole
line of mountains, and particularly of Long's Peak. Again we were
impressed by the fertility of the Colorado alfalfa fields and by the
rich green of its meadows. Greeley is a very attractive town with wide
streets and with pretty homes set in green lawns. It is well shaded,
stands high, and looks off to the noble line of mountains to the south.
Early on July 15th we left Greeley, taking a last look at the glorious
mountains to the south. We passed through fields upon fields of alfalfa
and of grain. Great stacks of alfalfa everywhere dotted the country. The
greenness of the land was refreshing. Then we came into more rolling
country, less cultivated. We were plainly in a new part of the country,
in this northwest corner of the State. The houses were new, and often
small. In some places new houses stood alongside the old ones, the
earlier ones being made of tar paper and looking like little cigar
boxes. Some houses had tents erected near them for use as barns. Some
houses were made of sod. There were very few trees, most ranch houses
looking bare and bald. We passed quantities of a beautiful blue flower,
growing sometimes in great patches. Its bell-shaped flowers, sometimes
rose, sometimes lavender, grew on tall green stalks. We also saw a
beautiful starry white flower growing along the roadside. At Sterling we
had a particularly good luncheon at the Southern Hotel on the main
street. We exhorted our host and hostess to put out a Lincoln Highway
sign, so that none should miss their excellent table.
We saw our old friends, the Matilija poppies, growing along the roadside
as we went along in the hot afternoon. This was one of the hottest days
of driving that we had in all our tour, and in it we made our longest
run, two hundred and eight miles. We took early supper at the
Commercial Hotel at Julesburg. Not long after leaving Julesburg we came
upon a flamboyant sign which announced that we were nineteen miles from
Ogallala, Nebraska. The sign also informed us with particular emphasis
that Ogallala was "a wet town." We had crossed the State line and had
left behind us Colorado with its mountains, its green meadows, its wild
yuccas, its Matilija poppies, and its dark masses of pine trees.
As we drove along in the dusky twilight, little owls kept flying low in
front of our car, attracted by its lights. Sometimes a rabbit sat in the
middle of the road, blinking and bewildered. We always gave him time to
recover himself and leap into the shadows of the roadside. We had had
another exquisite sunset with the same soft pastel shades that I had
seen at Boulder. During the day we had seen many meadow larks,
red-winged blackbirds, and doves. We had seen, too, many sparrow hawks,
sitting silent on the fence posts, waiting for the approach of evening.
In one place we saw a poor young meadow lark, hanging dead from a barbed
wire fence. He had evidently in flying struck his throat full against
one of the barbs and had hung there, impaled to death. At Ogallala we
found a very comfortable lodging house, The Hollingsworth, built over a
garage. We had a good room there, although it was impossible to find a
cool spot on that broiling night.
The next morning, as we took breakfast at a nearby restaurant, we
learned that Ogallala had had a grand contest and had "gone dry" two
weeks before. An enthusiastic gentleman who had taken part in the
conflict told us that already the town was wonderfully changed. We
congratulated him and urged him to see to it that the sign nineteen
miles to the west heralded Ogallala as a dry town rather than a wet one.
The next day was cooler. The mountains had disappeared, and only wide
rolling fields, sometimes as level as a floor, lay before us. We were
crossing Nebraska. We came by a rather poor road, really a grassy trail,
to North Platte, where we had luncheon at the Vienna Cafe. As we were
driving along between Ogallala and North Platte, the grass growing high
in the road tracks, we came suddenly upon a bevy of fat quail walking in
the road. As they flew somewhat heavily, I felt sure that our wheel had
struck some of them. So I went back to see. Three of them lay dead in
the road, having been unable to fly in time to avoid the wheels. The
noise of our machine had been muffled by the fact that that we were
driving over a grassy road and they had not heard us until we were on
them. We were sorry indeed to have killed the beautiful little brown
creatures. All through California and Colorado we had seen them, as they
were constantly flying up in front of the machine and running off to
cover. All along, the killdeer were darting about, calling loudly and
piercingly.
Beyond North Platte we came upon a country house which had been
pre-empted by a jolly house party of girls from town. They had put out
some facetious signs: "Fried Chicken Wanted" and "Votes for Women." We
stopped to call upon them and told them of our trip across the country,
while they insisted upon serving us with cake and lemonade.
Late in the day we passed some groups of movers, their horses and cattle
with them. We saw glorious fields of corn and of alfalfa, and we saw
fields dotted with little mounds or cocks of wheat and of millet. Four
miles before coming into Kearney, we passed the famous sign which marks
the distance half-way between San Francisco and Boston. We had seen a
print of this sign, pointing 1,733 miles West to Frisco and East 1,733
miles to Boston, on the cover of our Lincoln Highway guide, issued by
the Packard Motor Car Company. We stopped now to take a photograph of
it. A woman living in a farmhouse across the road was much interested in
our halt. She said that almost every motor party passing stopped to
photograph the sign.
We heard from her of two young women who were walking from coast to
coast, enjoying the country and its adventures. Somehow we missed them
in making the detour from Laramie to Denver. We had seen their
photographs on postcards which they were selling to help meet their
expenses. They were sisters, and looked very striking and romantic in
their walking dress. They wore broad-brimmed hats, loose blouses with
rolling collars, and wide trousers, tucked into high laced boots such as
engineers wear. Each carried a small revolver at her belt. We were sorry
to have missed seeing them against the picturesque background of the
Wyoming plains.
At Kearney we had supper at "Jack's Place," and went on in the twilight
to Minden, where we proposed stopping at "The Humphrey." We passed
through long fields of corn and over lonely rolling prairies. The
cornfields with their rows of tasseled stalks were like the dark, silent
ranks of a waiting army, caped and hooded, standing motionless until
marching orders came. The air was clear and fine, and the electric
lights of Minden shone from afar with the brilliance of stars.
From Minden, we came by way of Campbell to Red Cloud, where we had
luncheon at the Royal Hotel.
We had made this detour to Minden and Red Cloud in order to call upon a
friend who is enthusiastic over his fine ranch near Red Cloud. Galloway
cattle are his specialty, and he finds the rolling plains of southern
Nebraska a fine place to breed them. From Red Cloud we came on in the
afternoon through Blue Hill to Hastings, and through Hastings to
Fremont. We were en route for Lincoln, where we hoped to spend the
night. Between Minden and Red Cloud the country is very rolling, and
sweeps away from the eye in great undulations. High on some of these
ridges were fine silhouettes outlined against the sky: loaded wagons
bringing in the sheaves of grain; men standing high, feeding these
sheaves to the insatiable maw of the threshing machine; a boy standing
in the grain wagon as the thick yellow stream poured into it, leveling
the grain with a spade; all these and many other pictures of the Idyl of
Harvest. For two hundred miles of our run the smoke of the threshing
machines rose in the clear sky.
Sometimes the fields were covered with stacks of wheat looking like
great yellow bee-hives. Sometimes the wheat was in rounded mounds or
cocks. Surely we were seeing the bread of a nation on these vast
Nebraska plains.
Along the roadsides were quantities of "snow on the mountain," its
delicate grey-green leaves edged with a pure white border. Across the
fields the killdeer were flying, and calling in their shrill, clear
notes, which always seem to breathe of the sea. They were not out of
place, flying above these long billows of brown earth. The farmhouses
were marked by clumps of cottonwood trees, and as we moved Eastward a
few low evergreens began to appear.
Around Blue Hill the country is very fine, being a great plateau
stretching off into illimitable distances. As we climbed the hill to
the little town we met a farmer in his wagon who had just despatched a
bull snake, a thick, ugly-looking creature. We stopped to pass the time
of day, and he told us that he came to Nebraska from Illinois in '79 in
a covered wagon. He was enthusiastic over Nebraska.
We made another stop to watch at close range the operations of a
threshing machine. It was a fine sight. Two yellow streams came from the
spouts of the machine; a great stream of chaff which rapidly piled up in
a yellow mountain, and another stream of the heavy grain, pouring thick
and fast into a wagon. One of the men told us that they had threshed
fourteen hundred bushels the day before, working fourteen hours in fine,
clear weather.
Everywhere the lovely grey doves were flying. There were hundreds of
young meadow larks, too, and great numbers of red-winged blackbirds. It
was on the 17th of July that I saw brown thrushes for the first time. It
is interesting to watch the movements of the birds as the machine
approaches. The doves in the road fly promptly. They do not take chances
on being struck by the car. The sparrows wait until the last moment and
then neatly save themselves. I often wondered how they could escape
with so narrow a margin. We thought that the redheaded woodpeckers must
be rather clumsy, as we saw a number of them that had been struck by
other cars, and thrown just off the road.
It was impossible to reach Lincoln that night, so we stopped at a
country inn some miles away. Rising early, we drove into Lincoln for
breakfast. After a run about the city and a look at the buildings of the
State University, we drove on toward Omaha. Unfortunately we attempted
to take a cross-cut and found ourselves in an odd situation. We were
driving down an unfrequented hill road, in an attempt to cut across to
the main road, marked by white bands on the telephone poles. We suddenly
found ourselves hanging high and dry above the ruts of the road. The
rain had worn them so deep and the middle of the road had remained so
hard and dry, that on the hillside we were literally astride the ridge
in the middle of the road. This meant a long journey on foot to a
farmhouse to borrow a spade and a pick. It also meant much hacking and
digging away at the hard earth under the body of the machine to release
the axles and drop the wheels to the road. Finally it was accomplished.
We picked up the farmer's children who had come out to see the rescue
and drove down the long hill to the farmhouse. There we left our
implements and our hearty thanks. How hopeless it seems when one is hung
up on the road! And how blissful it is to bowl along freely once more!
Still the doves flew about us by the hundred and the brown thrushes
increased in number. We had more level country now, and it was only as
we approached Omaha that it became hilly.
We left Omaha, after looking about the city, late in the afternoon and
drove one hundred and eight miles to Carroll in Iowa. The first twenty
miles out of Omaha the road was extremely poor and very dusty. The trees
were much more numerous, black walnut, maple, ash, and catalpa being
among them.
Just as we felt that one could find his way across Nevada by a trail of
whiskey bottles so we began to feel that one could cross Iowa on a trail
marked by dead fowls. I had never before seen so many chickens killed by
motor cars. Perhaps the explanation lay in the fact that all along our
one hundred and eight miles from Omaha to Carroll we passed numbers of
farmers driving Ford cars. As we approached Carroll, we came to a hill
top from which we looked down on a valley of tasseled corn fields. It
was exactly like looking down on an immense, shining green rug, with
yellow tufts thrown up over its green surface. We saw but few orchards.
This was a corn country.
Carroll is a pleasant little town, with fine street lamps, and with a
green park around its Courthouse. We were surprised to find so good a
hotel as Burke's Hotel in a small town. Its landlady and proprietor has
recently made extensive improvements in it, and it is a place of vantage
on the Highway. The country around Carroll is very fine, being rolling
and beautifully cultivated.
We reached Carroll very late in the day and were obliged to take our
supper at a restaurant near the hotel. We were interested in a party of
four young people who were evidently out for a good time. The two young
gentlemen, by a liberal use of twenty-five cent pieces, kept the
mechanical piano pounding out music all through their meal. They were
both guiltless of coats and waist-coats. We had seen all through the
West men in all sorts of public assemblies, more or less formal, wearing
only their shirts and trousers. So we had become somewhat accustomed to
what we called the shirt-waist habit.
Many customs of the West strike the eye of the Easterner with
astonishment. This custom which permits men to be at ease in public
places and in the presence of ladies without coat or waist-coat in hot
weather; the custom which permits ladies to sit in church without their
hats; these and others which belong to the free West, the Easterner has
to become accustomed to and to take kindly. Several times in California,
and in Nevada, when we asked a question we received the cheerful, if
unconventional response, "You bet!" "Will you please bring me a glass of
water?" "You bet!" "We're on the Lincoln Highway, are we not?" "You
bet!" These somewhat startling responses simply indicated a most
cheerful spirit and a hearty readiness to do you any favor possible.
Leaving Carroll, we come on through Ames, Jefferson, Marshalltown, and
Belle Plain, into Cedar Rapids. Out from Carroll we have rather bumpy
roads for some time. Then the road improves and is excellent from Ames
on until we near Cedar Rapids. But all along work is being done on the
roads and their improvement is a matter of great local interest. We
pass a point in Marshall County where they are working with a new
machine for cutting down the road. I call it a dirt-eating machine. The
commissioner is extremely proud of it, and calls our attention to the
immense amount of work it can do, and to the huge mouthfuls of earth
which it bites out from the bank, through which the wider road is to
run. We are charmed with the lovely country around Marshalltown, and
with the very beautiful country between Belle Plain and Cedar Rapids. We
drive through the campus and past the buildings of the State
Agricultural College at Ames as we come into the town.
We are passing beautiful farms. Here we see a group of splendid dappled
grey Percheron draught horses, the pride of a stock-farm. There we pass
reddish-yellow shocks of oats. The country is more wooded now. We see
maples, oaks, ash, willows, and black walnuts. Here and there are yellow
wild flowers, somewhat like black-eyed Susans. One thing we remark in
all these Middle Western farms. There seem to be almost no flowers
around the farm houses. An English farmhouse or a French farmhouse would
have a riot of flowers growing all about and making a mass of color. We
miss this in our Western farms and wonder why it is that we see so
little color. We see practically no orchards, and very few grape-vines.
This is the country of wheat and oats. We have left the orchards and the
vineyards far behind us in lovely California.
Cedar Rapids is a busy city with several hotels. Leaving the city on the
morning of July 21st, we drive first through quite heavily wooded
country. Then the view opens out and we are once more driving over
beautiful, undulating country with rich crops of oats and corn. The
perfume of the corn, standing tall and green, is delicious. When we pass
through Mt. Vernon, we take a look at the buildings of Wesleyan College,
which stands on a high ridge commanding a fine view. All the way to
Clinton the country is attractive. After luncheon at the pleasant town
of Clinton, we cross the broad Mississippi, looking up and down its
green shores with delight. We are in Illinois now, and find Sterling and
Dixon attractive towns on the Rock River, a stream dotted with green
islands. The country is very open, with long stretches of prairie, green
with standing corn or red-yellow with shocks of oats. We spend the night
in De Kalb at a funny old hotel, built, they tell us, by Mr. Glidden,
the "barbed-wire king." The hotel is called "The Glidden." Its ceilings
are twenty feet high and we feel ourselves to be in "a banquet hall
deserted." From De Kalb we make a short detour into Chicago, returning
to the Highway at Joliet.
Joliet is a smoky city, full of factories and busy with the world's
work. It is late afternoon when we reach Joliet, and we drive on to
Elkhart, where we put up at a beautiful hotel with every modern
convenience. The Indiana roads are in excellent condition and take us
through a lovely rolling country of oaks and beech forests, and of
fields of grain breathing pastoral peace and prosperity.
All along through the Middle West we have been pleased to see the
immense interest taken in the Lincoln Highway. Everywhere one sees the
Lincoln Highway signs used in abundance on the streets through which the
Highway passes. The telephone poles, the garages, and sometimes the
shops, all are marked with the familiar red, white, and blue. They tell
us of a Western town whose citizens were so anxious to have their town
on the Highway that they of their own responsibility painted red, white,
and blue signs on the telephone poles leading into and through the
town. Later they were reluctantly obliged to paint out these signs, as
the Highway was not taken through their town.
The names of the farms in the Middle West are many of them very
interesting; as "Rolling Prairie Farm," "Round Prairie Farm," "Burr Oak
Valley Farm," "Hickory Grove Farm," and "Hill Brook Farm."
At the entrance to a farm in Illinois a farmer has nailed a shelf to a
telephone pole near his gate, and on this shelf he has placed a small
bust of Lincoln. I fancy this is a prophecy of many monuments that we
shall see along the Lincoln Highway in days to come.
We come into Ohio through the pleasant town of Van Wert, and drive on
through fields of corn and wheat to Lima; and here we leave the Lincoln
Highway for the present. We are to make a detour into Logan County, and
from there we plan to travel southeast into the Old Dominion.
We spend a number of days in Logan County, driving about over the hills
and through the valleys. This, too, is rolling country. I know it well,
for here I spent my childhood. I know these forests of oak and hickory,
and these rich fields of corn and wheat. I know the delicious scent of
clover fields in the warm summer twilights. I recall the names that my
girlhood friend and I used to give to the farmhouses as we drove about;
"The Potato House," "The Dinner Bell House," "The Little Red House," and
others. They are all there, and but little changed, although the people
who live in them have probably changed.
We are told by a friend, who is a motor enthusiast, that she recently
killed a turkey on the road. In all my motoring experience I have never
seen a turkey, a guinea fowl or a duck, killed by a motor. But my friend
tells me that they found it impossible to escape this particular turkey,
as he refused to get out of the way.
We passed three little girls one day, all astride the same horse,
driving the cows home from pasture. We asked them to stand while we took
their picture. They were greatly distressed. "We have on our dirty
clothes," said they. "Never mind," we said. "But our hair isn't combed!"
they exclaimed. "Never mind," we said again. "You will look all right in
the picture." And so they do.
The devices and pennants with which motorists advertise themselves and
express their enjoyment are very interesting. Some carry pennants with
the names of the towns or the States from which they come. Others carry
pennants with the names of all the principal towns which they have
visited. Whole clusters of pennants are fastened about the car, and
float gaily in the wind. Some carry a pennant across the rear of the
tonneau, which reads, "Excuse my dust." Others carry a pennant in the
same place which reads, "Thank you."
We infer that this must be by way of courtesy to those cars which turn
out for them to pass and fly on ahead. We meet many tourists in the
Middle West who have been for more or less extended tours in the States
near their own.