Traveling east on Highway 50, just past Pacific House in El Dorado County, is this welcome sign for the Eldorado National Forest. You can see in the background a frontage road that seems to disappear into the present freeway at both ends.
In the above photo, we see Monica walking on this frontage road, headed east. You can see our truck off in the distance parked next to the welcome sign.
The above map shows the Lincoln Highway in blue, or at least where we thought it went. In red, we have drawn this newfound route. You can see Peavine Ridge road at the left and to the right Bridal Veil Falls.
What makes finding these “lost alignments” fun is when there is some way for us to ID the exact date when the road was finished. We lucked out here as we spotted a culvert passing under the found road. We check these culverts closely as the sometimes are dated, and this one was! You can see 1923 imprinted upon the top portion of the culvert. This likely means the section of road we are looking at replaced the original alignment of the Lincoln Highway developed in 1913. We will head back and see if we can find the original route, likely tucked into the hill.
We will submit this newly found route to the Lincoln Highway Association cartography department so they can update the official map.