Lincoln Highway Fountains

Illinois is the only state on the Lincoln Highway that got drinking fountains, and they came from one man's memorial to his mother. Carl Parker donated them in memory of Amanda Sutherland Parker, who had grown up in the Garden Plain country of Whiteside County. The plan was one every ten miles across the state, which proved impossible because there was no water supply at most of those points, so the fountains were given to towns instead. Seventeen were donated, and the Lincoln Highway Association's 1914 progress report records nine being placed. A pedestal carried a bubbler on top and a spigot on the side for drawing water into a pail, and around the inside edge of the bowl, where it could only be read by somebody bending down, were cast the words In Memoriam. The gift came with conditions, and they were about the road rather than the water. A town had to rename the street the highway ran along as Lincoln Way, mark the route through town with the painted Lincoln Highway signs, and pay to install and maintain the fountain. Creston took the bargain, and set its fountain on the pavement outside the Fogleman Building on North Main Street, with a red, white and blue L painted on the side. Not one of the Illinois fountains survives. The pedestal standing on Main Street is of the same period but a different design, with a larger bowl and its spigot on one side, and the fountains themselves are now the subject of a panel in the gazebo beside the village hall.