page_title: Columbus, Nebraska
section_title: Automobile age
hierarchical_section_title: Columbus, Nebraska / History / Automobile age
caption_attribution_description: Lincoln Highway Garage at 2304 13th Street in Columbus, Nebraska; seen from the southeast. The garage is a contributing property to the Columbus Commercial Historic District, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The modern broad-front building was constructed in 1915.
context_page_description: Columbus is a city in and the county seat of Platte County, in the state of Nebraska in the Midwestern United States. The population was 22,111 at the 2010 census.
context_section_description: In 1911, the Meridian Highway project was launched with the formation of a Meridian Road association in Kansas.  Later that same year, John Nicholson, originator of the highway, spoke at a meeting in Columbus, at which the Nebraska Meridian Road Association was organized.  The proposed north-south transcontinental highway crossed the Platte and the Loup rivers at the Columbus bridges.  In 1922, it was designated a state highway.  The completion of the Meridian Bridge in 1924, replacing a seasonal ferry across the Missouri River at the Nebraska-South Dakota border, made the highway a year-round route from Canada to Mexico.  In 1928, the route became U.S. Highway 81.
  In 1913, the Lincoln Highway was established as an east-west transcontinental highway.  It followed the Platte River route across Nebraska; ultimately, about half of its mileage was on the Union Pacific right-of-way.
  It also crossed the Loup on the bridge at Columbus.
  In 1926, the route became U.S. Highway 30.
  Traffic on the two transcontinental auto routes through and near central Columbus spurred a burst of commercial construction.  Hotels were expanded and new ones built; service garages were opened.  To make the route through Columbus more attractive to motorists, the city undertook to illuminate and pave the downtown streets.  By 1925, all of the city's major commercial thoroughfares were paved, and almost every lot along 13th Street (the Lincoln Highway) between 23rd and 29th Avenues was occupied by a commercial building.
  Rural Platte County suffered badly from the Great Depression.  Grain and livestock prices had been high during World War I, engendering a bubble in farmland; to acquire additional acres, farmers had secured them with mortgages not only on the newly purchased land, but also on their older holdings.  The fall in the prices of agricultural commodities, combined with drought-induced crop failures in 1934 and 1936, forced many such farmers to abandon their lands.
  The civic and commercial leaders of Columbus aggressively sought federal and state funds for local construction projects during this time.  In 1931, the Meridian Viaduct was completed, carrying the combined Meridian and Lincoln highways across the Union Pacific tracks and eliminating a grade-level crossing.  
  In 1930–31, the aging and inadequate bridge across the Platte was replaced; in 1932–33, a new bridge was built at the Loup crossing.
caption: Lincoln Highway Garage, built in downtown Columbus in 1915
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