By 1945, Lincoln, Nebraska, was the beating heart of American scooter manufacturing. The company responsible for that was Cushman Motor Works, founded by brothers Everett and Clinton Cushman back in 1903 and formally incorporated a decade later in 1913. What began as an engine company grew into something much larger — a business whose machines would end up on farms, in backyards, on military bases, and on the streets of postwar America.
Cushman’s rise started with its four-stroke Husky engine, which the company began producing in 1922. The Husky powered a wide range of equipment — farm machinery, pumps, lawnmowers, and boats. The engine was reliable and affordable, which made it a popular choice across rural America. But it was the Great Depression that pushed Cushman into the scooter business. To keep Husky engine sales alive during the economic collapse, the company began building the Auto-Glide scooter, giving everyday Americans a cheap and practical way to get around.
When World War II broke out, Cushman scooters took on a new role entirely. The United States Armed Forces adopted them as a lightweight alternative to automobiles, using them to move personnel and supplies around bases and airfields. The military demand pushed production into high gear and cemented Cushman’s reputation as a serious manufacturer, not just a regional curiosity.
As the war drew to a close in 1945, LIFE magazine photographer Wallace Kirkland traveled to Lincoln to document what Cushman Motor Works had become. His assignment captured both sides of the story — the factory floor where workers built the machines, and the Nebraska locals who rode them. The photos show a community closely tied to the scooter industry, with riders of all ages taking to the streets.
Kirkland’s photographs are a direct window into a specific American moment — a city whose identity was wrapped up in a single product, at the exact point when that product was about to become a postwar phenomenon. Nebraska wasn’t just building scooters for itself. It was building them for the country.
Inside the Cushman plant, the scale of production tells its own story. Workers assembled scooters in a facility that had spent years meeting military contracts, and now stood ready to shift toward a civilian market hungry for affordable, independent transportation. The machines coming off the line in 1945 were built for a country that was tired of wartime restrictions and ready to move.
