Lincoln Higway- end to end

On Friday, the Lincoln Society of Jersey City met at the Prez's statue there for a few words and the reading of his Cooper Union speech before they adjourned for dinner. Pretty ordinary stuff. But the tinder for a fascinating discovery.
Seems that this sculpture, known as "Mystic Lincoln", was erected in 1930 to mark the eastern end of the Lincoln Highway- the first US transcontinental highway. Who knew? I had never head of the road, so I did some digging and found that it was dedicated on Halloween night, 1913. The brainchild of Carl Fisher, the guy who started the Indy 500, it was the first link that connected local roads into one line across the nation. The financing of the project was fascinating and full of skullduggery and drama. The nation celebrated this "lasting monument to the automobile industry", according to the SF Examiner, in grand style. But I digress.
"Mystic Lincoln" (its common, though not official name) is a beauty of a bronze piece that depicts the President sitting on a rock, contemplating the land below him, much as he was known to have done during the Civil War. The sculptor, James Earle Fraser, was a no-brainer for doing this piece at this place, because his famous "End of the Trail" statue, of a Native American warrior slumped on his horse, was supposed to be erected at the western terminus of the same road. I can't find that it ever happened, though, in spite of numerous citations that it had been. He did exhibit the 18ft. plaster model that he had created at the age of 17 in the Colombian Exposition of 1915, and hoped it would be cast and erected, but WWI intervened and it didn't happen. The original stood in the weather for 48 years over in Mooney Park.