Tourism Director, City Plan For Lincoln Highway Celebration

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the completion of the Lincoln Highway that stretches from Times Square in New York City to Lincoln Park in San Francisco, California passing right through Kimball along the way.

The 100th anniversary celebration will consist of automobile tours that will depart from Times Square and Lincoln Park on June 22 to follow the original Lincoln Highway route to Kearney, Nebraska where they will meet for the official centennial celebration events to take place June 30 through July 1.

Though the official celebration for the anniversary will take place in Kearney, Kimball Tourism Director Jo Caskey is already looking forward to the traffic the celebration will bring through Kimball.

"We're going to see the traffic from San Francisco headed to Kearney coming right through town.Those are visitors that will be staying in our community over night or coming through our community. We want to do some kind of a welcome banner for them.," Caskey.

Caskey hopes to work on the curb appeal of Kimball in the months leading up to the Lincoln Highway celebration, teaming up with Keep Kimball Beautiful to clean up the entrances around the city.

"Our approach from the south is appealing. Our approach from the north is moderately appealing. Our approach from the east a little less. Our approach from the West has very little curb appeal. This may well give the motivation to improve the curb appeal of our western approach," Caskey said.

With not only the Lincoln Highway anniversary crowd, but also Bike Riding Across Nebraska coming to Kimball this summer bringing approximately 600 people to the city, the city would like to focus on orchestrating a community wide effort in order that our visitors will see Kimball at its full potential, according to Mayor James Schnell.

"Highway 30 will have new banners for the celebrations. We'll be stressing what the businesses along highway 30 need to do to make the city look attractive," Mayor Schnell said.

Although the city is still in the early process of planning exactly what they are going to do for the celebration here in town, there is already excitement over the potential boost the Lincoln Highway celebration could give to Kimball.

"I think that you'll see a spike. I think if Kimball can see how this and BRAN can bring lodging and people in for meals and gas on a regular basis, you'll see a spike for your weekends. I think we know how to do things like this, but I think this can instill in people that we can do these things more often and have the community weekend events," Schnell said.