Crescent, Iowa

The Mt. Crescent Ski Area is just north of town on Pottawattamie County
Highway L-20.

Highway L-20 is known as Old Lincoln Highway in Crescent. The Lincoln
Highway was the nation's first transcontinental auto route. It was the brainchild
of Carl Fisher, the founder of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Indy 500.
In 1912, he conceived the idea of a "Coast-to-Coast Rock Highway," a gravel
road that would run from New York City to San Francisco and be completed in
time for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. Fisher went to
the heads of the nation's automobile manufacturers for funding. Henry Ford
turned him down, but Henry Joy, president of the Packard Motor Car Company,
pledged support. It was Joy who came up with the idea of naming the highway
for Lincoln. The original concept of a gravel road was soon abandoned in favor
of paving as much of the route as possible with concrete. In 1925, the federal
government adopted a numbering system for the nation's highways that
replaced named roads. Much of the Lincoln Highway, including the stretch
through Crescent, became U.S. Highway 30. The highway was paved between
Council Bluffs and Missouri Valley in 1927, but in 1931 the route of U.S. Highway
30 was changed to run from Missouri Valley to Blair, Nebraska. The highway
through Crescent eventually became a state highway, then a county highway.

Crescent was founded as Crescent City in 1856. By 1907, it had a couple
general stores, two hotels, a lumberyard, a livery, and a pair of nurseries. Today,
there’s a convenience store, the Pink Poodle Restaurant, the Hog Heaven bar,
Henry’s Diner, Sam’s Place, and Denny’s (not the chain).