November 15, 2013
County roads V67 and V5G are both signed on the north-south road between IA 78 and Ollie, pop. 215, which was IA 304 until the Great Decommissioning of 1980. In Ollie, V5G splits off on a northwestern stairstep route to IA 149, a diagonal that merits a letter-number-letter name. V67 has a more direct route north to Harper but has an east-west segment without curves on either end. There are no signs at the intersection of the roads in Ollie, and Google Maps still has IA 304 marked inside the city limits.
This pair of signs shows two different generations, or at least styles, of county road pentagons in Iowa. On the right, the white (or now-very-faded-yellow) border and letters were likely pre-made and the designation itself added later. That would allow a county to have a stack of blanks and put on letters/numbers as necessary. The orange-on-blue as seen on the left is the current style, which has been around quite a while. Notice also that the letters are slightly different; those on the left are wider.