August 4, 2015: After IA 122/old US 18 was turned over, Rudd remained a city “on” the Iowa highway system because the four-lane is still within the city limits.
I’ve sporadically mentioned my resolution to visit all 944 existing incorporated cities in Iowa (soon to be 943) with a start date of my first big trip for Iowa Highway Ends pictures in 2003. I thought I’d take a couple blog posts to go through where I’ve been through the last three years or so in pursuit of this goal.
But first, there’s a question that had to be answered before I knew where I was going: How many towns will I have reached by virtue of traveling every mile of every state-maintained road in Iowa?
The 2014 average annual daily traffic map, which only shows towns on state-maintained roads, has 501 towns on it. The 2015 highways-only map (PDF) has 560 towns on it. One is playing very tight with the rules, one is playing very loose, and the real number is closer to the former. Comparing the individual city maps to the 2015 map finds some exceptions, both obscure (Gowrie) and obvious (Gilbert), but the 2014 is missing some that should be there (Luana, Radcliffe). There are a few towns that used to be on spur routes that have annexed land up to a highway (Manilla, Ocheyedan), but you don’t think of them as being “on” it.
There are about 100 more cities that were on the map before the Second Great Decommissioning of 2003. They can be seen on this 2002 vehicular traffic map. That leaves about 30 percent or so of Iowa’s incorporated places that haven’t recently been on a state-maintained road and aren’t immediately adjacent to one.
If the city limits touch the highway, even running down the centerline, I consider that sufficient, although I may have returned in the past few years for a more in-depth pass. Since I spent most of 2003-13 going after highways and recently deceased highways, that 30 percent would be the hardest to get.
It turns out that I’ll also have set wheel through the dozen places in Iowa that have disincorporated since 1985, too, or at least visited 11 and skimmed by one.