October 13, 2006: The first signs you see after IA 92 enters the state from Illinois are going to change this summer.
A city route that has been a part of the Iowa highway system for more than nine decades will cease to be state-maintained on July 1.
In the DOT’s five-year plan is a “transfer of jurisdiction” line item regarding IA 92 from the southwest corner of the Muscatine bypass to the Norbert Beckey Bridge. The mostly diagonal road following Grandview Avenue and Mississippi Drive has been part of the state highway system since its inception in 1920, becoming part of a multi-state highway numbered 92 in 1939 and carrying US 61 from 1926 to 1984.
In order to keep continuity of the route, IA 92 will be moved onto the US 61 bypass, creating a triplex with US 61 and IA 22 on Muscatine’s north side, and then come south on Park Avenue to the bridge. The transferred road will still be signed as Business 61. If IA 38’s south end gets truncated to the bypass, which is likely since it will be redundant south of there, it will be the third time that it’s been pulled back from downtown Muscatine to that vicinity. It happened before in 1925 and 1969, when there was a Y-intersection near the current one.
The city of Muscatine is accepting of this change because it has wanted to carry out a “Mississippi Drive Corridor Project” to renovate it. The state will give the city $13 million and unload some urban mileage in the process.
This is the first major change in IA 92’s alignment since the Knoxville bypass and new road east to Mahaska County opened in 1978. The four-lane upgrade west of Knoxville and the new South Omaha bridge closely followed existing alignments. The route will be about five miles longer.
More information and photos can be found on the IA 92, IA 38, and Business 61 Muscatine pages as well as my Muscatine highway chronology.