Lima, Ohio
The importance of the Dixie Highway was not lost on the writer of one Lima Daily News editorial. On July 29, 1915, he opined the following:
The Dixie Highway will be more valuable in one minute than the Lincoln Highway in one year, for the very reason that the resorters and persons planning trips up to Michigan will take the Dixie Road to reach their destinations. This will bring benefits to Lima business men, Lima hotels, and Lima in general. Get the highway, and let the other fellow fight about the route.
History would prove that writer to be somewhat correct. However, in modern times, most vacationers are now heading south, while it is the many hunters and fishers that still head north. Regarding traffic, today’s version of the Dixie Highway is essentially the crowded route of Interstate 75, which carries five times the traffic as U.S. Route 30, the modern equivalent of the Lincoln Highway.
In an earlier editorial published in the May 16, 1915 issue of The Lima Sunday News, the existing Lincoln Highway was seen as a potential beneficiary of the Dixie Highway. As it was written:
Lima should be on [the Dixie Highway], if for no other reason than the fact that it will be a junction point with the Lincoln Highway. This would ensure the coming of tourists who would be seeking a trip out of Chicago, yet would prefer to come through a new territory in reaching eastern points…While the Lincoln Highway has not been the wonderful success that originally was expected…the Dixie Highway should go a long way toward solving the problem…[putting] the Lincoln Highway on the map more forcibly than by any other means.
Lima would in fact become the original point of intersection for the Lincoln Highway and the eastern branch of the Dixie Highway. The 1920 Automobile Blue Book states that a monument was located in the Lima Public Square to recognize this fact, but this author has never found any photographic evidence to support this statement. Alas, the relocation of the Lincoln Highway in June 1919 to the long straight course through Beaverdam would have rendered the memorial a moot point.
Source: IN SEARCH OF . . . THE DIXIE HIGHWAY IN OHIO
