09/05/2026
Before there was an interstate, there was one road meant to carry you from New York to San Francisco, and a long stretch of it runs across southern Pennsylvania. đźš—
The Lincoln Highway was conceived in 1913 as the first road planned to cross the country, and in Pennsylvania it largely follows what is now Route 30. It climbs the ridges from Adams County west through Bedford and Somerset and on into Westmoreland, over grades that punished early cars and made the whole trip feel like an expedition rather than a drive.
What grew up alongside it is the good part. Tourist cabins, filling stations, diners and roadside oddities all sprang up to catch drivers, including the Coffee Pot in Bedford, a building shaped exactly like what it sounds like, put up in the 1920s and rescued from demolition decades later. Murals along the corridor now mark the old stops. Drive it slowly and you are essentially driving through the invention of the American road trip.
Have you driven Route 30 across the mountains, and what is still worth pulling over for?
