Victory Highway

Route information

Existed:

1921 – 1938

Major junctions

West end:

San Francisco

East end:

New York City

Highway system

Auto trails

The Victory Highway was an auto trail across the United States between New York City and San Francisco, roughly equivalent to the present U.S. Route 40. It was created by the Victory Highway Association, which was organized in 1921 to locate and mark a transcontinental highway to be dedicated to American forces who died in World War I. A series of Victory Eagle sculptures would mark the route, although only six were completed.

By 1922 the organization had decided to run the highway from New York City southwest to Camden, New Jersey; Philadelphia; Wilmington, Delaware; Baltimore; and Washington, D.C. before turning west to San Francisco. Washington was later removed from the route, and the highway was relocated to run west from Baltimore to Cumberland, Maryland. At Cumberland, it picked up the old National Road to Vandalia, Illinois, which was already marked as part of the National Old Trails Road. It continued to follow that auto trail near Fulton, Missouri, and then followed a different route across the rest of that state, passing through Jefferson City on its way to Kansas City. The highway continued west from Kansas City to Denver over the Golden Belt Highway, and then ran via Salt Lake City, across the Great Salt Lake Desert on the Wendover Cut-off and into Nevada. After crossing the Sierra Nevada mountain range into California, the highway went through Sacramento, through the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta over what is now State Route 160, crossed over the Antioch Bridge, passed through the Broadway Tunnel, and ended in San Francisco.

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