Clip from the first state highway map (1919)
When the Iowa highway system was created in 1920, Mount Sterling was important enough that it (or the Missouri border just south) was the south end of IA 11. That only lasted four years, though, until the connection to Missouri was moved to the road south of Milton. That connection eventually became the south IA 15. The Iowa Highway Commission briefly considered making a spur connection to Mount Sterling — one of the first additions to the original system — but it never was put into effect.
On Wednesday, Mount Sterling, the 14th-smallest incorporated place in Iowa, will cease to exist as a town. News reports say it will be the first to disincorporate since Littleport in 2005, but that is only if Searsboro’s has not gone into effect. (Those two would leave 945 incorporated Iowa towns.)
Mount Sterling, Iowa: 1907-2012.
EDIT/UPDATE, April 12: The current tally of incorporated Iowa cities remains 946. “The county wouldn’t take us,” Searsboro’s mayor says. The title, but not the link, has been updated accordingly.