Greetings fellow travelers.  You have all seen my Hot Rod Art style, but I wanted to give you a taste of something a little different.  As the Artist-in-Residence for the Iowa Lincoln Highway Association, I have the pleasure of creating drawings of historical sites along the landscape of the Iowa Lincoln Highway.  Most all of these drawings are taken from the early days of the Lincoln Highway.

Now think back with me to what folks experienced driving back around 1913.  These folks drove the Model-T Ford, a novelty to the common man, as was the new idea of a road trip.  The road trip caught on as a new pass-time across the nation as more people left their homes to experience new sights.  Unfortunately, the road system was not ready for this new trend and was better for the horse and buggy, not the automobile.  Long distance automobile travel was something new, as before, most had been done on the railroad lines.

Youngville Station was a one-stop. A one-stop was a combination diner, hotel, and gas station all in one. The original site of the Youngville Station sits several miles west of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  Youngville offered tourist cabins for rest at $1 per night and a cafe for eating, if you could afford a home cooked meal. If not, the cabins also provided a campsite for your dining needs. It also offered a mechanic on duty and two, state-of-the-art, visible gas pumps.

Places like Youngville usually grew up around the crossroads, spread just far enough apart so that they would bring commerce to each station and not compete with one another.

Today this site is a restored interpretive site for the Lincoln Highway in Iowa.  If you happen by Cedar Rapids, continue on and take in the wonderful history of the Youngville Station and maybe taste a little of the life folks lived many years ago.