PILGRIMAGE O N WHEELS BY W I L L I A M E . OLIVER
NEVADA STATE HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT
Lincoln
Highway
outside the ghost town of Hamilton,
Nevada.
Forty-one years ago one Sunday afternoon, in Salt Lake City, I clambered into an old Packard Roadster beside its driver, Robert E. Knowlden.1 He let in the clutch, and we headed west across Nevada bound for San Francisco and the fall semester at the University of California. We were two young college students out for adventure and an inexpensive trip to the Pacific Coast. Our route was the historic Lincoln Highway, America's first transcontinental automobile road. In 1919 a young, unknown officer named Dwight D. Eisenhower rode over this same highway from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to the Golden Gate as part of the first U.S. Army truck convoy to cross the continent. In 1920, at the height of Mr. Oliver, former U t a h n now residing in Los Angeles, California, is retired from the post of drama critic on the Los Angeles Herald-Express and is self-employed as a writer. I n the year 1922, M r . Oliver changed his family name from Onions. 1 M r . Knowlden, practicing attorney in Vallejo, California, is a native U t a h n .
