Oct. 7, 2013: The genericization of exit signage is complete on all rural Iowa interstates. Only “End 149” survived at Williamsburg and got its own pole.
It has been embarrassingly long since I’ve made updates to the highway end pages themselves. But I finally finished up…with last year. (And since this year is going to be last year very soon, I’m still way behind.)
The two updates I’ve made involve two of the biggest recent changes to the Iowa highway system: The replacement of all signs at Iowa interstate exits with larger Clearview signs that do not include mileage, and the extension of IA 163 to the Mississippi River.
I’ve interspersed the pictures of the new signage style with all the old photos I had with IA 149 at I-80, creating (so far) the clearest comparison of old and new. These photos were taken way back in October 2013, at the end of my second long vacation of that year, just before I discovered that I could’ve been importing trip data from the GPS to my computer all this time. (D’oh!)
Pictures and text for the IA 163 East page clarify some things about the old intersection with IA 92, and also show the “greenout” panels used as 163 approached the interchange on the south side of Oskaloosa that was its endpoint from 1997 to 2009.