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Lee Highway
The Lee Highway was a United States auto trail through the American South and Southwest. When opened in 1923, it connected Washington, D.C., and San Diego, California; extensions were later added to New York and San Francisco.
The route was created to be a Southern complement to the Lincoln Highway, the nation's first transcontinental auto route. It was named for Confederate general Robert E. Lee as part of a broad effort to present Confederate actions during the American Civil War as just, heroic, and not centered on slavery.
The route was laid out by the Lee Highway Association, a private group founded in 1919 to create the route and encourage the improvement of roadways between Washington and San Diego. The later extensions used existing developed highways.
By 1926, the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) adopted the U.S. numbered highway system to replace named trails. Parts of Lee Highway were designated with route numbers—east to west, U.S. 211, U.S. 11, U.S. 72, U.S. 70, U.S. 366, and U.S. 80—while other parts retained vestiges of its earlier name and history.
In 1919, Dr. Samuel Myrtle Johnson of Roswell, New Mexico, wrote to David Carlisle Humphreys of Lexington, Virginia, proposing a transcontinental auto trail that would connect Southern states as the 1913 Lincoln Highway had done in the north. Johnson proposed to name this new road for Robert E. Lee, the former leader of the vanquished Confederate Army. At the time, Lee was venerated by many Americans, especially in the American South, under the pseudohistorical and historical negationist myth that the cause of the Confederate States during the American Civil War was just, heroic, and not centered on slavery.
Humphreys duly put out a call for a meeting in Roanoke, Virginia, to form a new national highway association. On December 3, 1919, five hundred men from five states met in Roanoke to officially form the Lee Highway Association.
In January 1922, Johnson wrote in The New York Times, "Although only twenty months old, the work of the Lee Highway Association has already progressed so steadily that completion of the transcontinental route is anticipated within three years." In November 1923, a commemorative milestone was dedicated at a ceremony at Horton Plaza Park in downtown San Diego to mark the arrival of the highway at the Pacific coast. With much fanfare, President Calvin Coolidge pushed a button in the White House that rang a gong in Horton Plaza.
From the memoirs of Katherine Johnson Balcomb (April 3, 1894 – February 2, 1980), published in The Balcomb Family Tree Book:
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Lee Highway
The Lee Highway was a United States auto trail through the American South and Southwest. When opened in 1923, it connected Washington, D.C., and San Diego, California; extensions were later added to New York and San Francisco.
The route was created to be a Southern complement to the Lincoln Highway, the nation's first transcontinental auto route. It was named for Confederate general Robert E. Lee as part of a broad effort to present Confederate actions during the American Civil War as just, heroic, and not centered on slavery.
The route was laid out by the Lee Highway Association, a private group founded in 1919 to create the route and encourage the improvement of roadways between Washington and San Diego. The later extensions used existing developed highways.
By 1926, the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) adopted the U.S. numbered highway system to replace named trails. Parts of Lee Highway were designated with route numbers—east to west, U.S. 211, U.S. 11, U.S. 72, U.S. 70, U.S. 366, and U.S. 80—while other parts retained vestiges of its earlier name and history.
In 1919, Dr. Samuel Myrtle Johnson of Roswell, New Mexico, wrote to David Carlisle Humphreys of Lexington, Virginia, proposing a transcontinental auto trail that would connect Southern states as the 1913 Lincoln Highway had done in the north. Johnson proposed to name this new road for Robert E. Lee, the former leader of the vanquished Confederate Army. At the time, Lee was venerated by many Americans, especially in the American South, under the pseudohistorical and historical negationist myth that the cause of the Confederate States during the American Civil War was just, heroic, and not centered on slavery.
Humphreys duly put out a call for a meeting in Roanoke, Virginia, to form a new national highway association. On December 3, 1919, five hundred men from five states met in Roanoke to officially form the Lee Highway Association.
In January 1922, Johnson wrote in The New York Times, "Although only twenty months old, the work of the Lee Highway Association has already progressed so steadily that completion of the transcontinental route is anticipated within three years." In November 1923, a commemorative milestone was dedicated at a ceremony at Horton Plaza Park in downtown San Diego to mark the arrival of the highway at the Pacific coast. With much fanfare, President Calvin Coolidge pushed a button in the White House that rang a gong in Horton Plaza.
From the memoirs of Katherine Johnson Balcomb (April 3, 1894 – February 2, 1980), published in The Balcomb Family Tree Book: