Blog post 2000!
With all the Iowa highway information newly available online, there’s plenty of work I can do. I’ve been doing some of that by editing the pages with the most important changes (or obvious corrections). I announced a previous round of that in March.
I’ve also noticed that there are plenty of relevant pictures from my trips that I have never put online. It’s time to fix that, most likely by going through all the pages for revisions and updates.
I think it’s feasible to extend this website’s scope a little too. Now I am going to include post-1969 ends of post-1980 highways when possible. This involves somewhere around 60 new locations, which could change after more study. The batch includes the ends that existed inside towns before highways were truncated at the city limits, five in Benton County alone. I have a good chunk of these already, and more are easily reachable (except for IA 313 inside Melvin five hours away).
Overall, though, the Great Decommissioning of 1980-81 is still out. There are simply too many routes involved.
Pages that have something added to reflect this so far:
- IA 12’s present signed end, the Riverside Boulevard exit on I-29, was its actual south end in the 1970s. I have also added some information about its one-year extension to the Combination Bridge in the late 1950s while the first parts of I-29 were built.
- IA 25 now includes photos at the Missouri state line and near Blockton.
- IA 37’s extension into Irwin, which was not on the 1981 map but apparently wasn’t turned over until 1982, is now mentioned.
- IA 48’s former south end in Shenandoah has a picture and a map.
- Pictures of the closest one can get today to the Lincoln Highway’s entrance into Iowa, where the former Lyons-Fulton Bridge connected with Main Street, are on the US 30 and IA 136 pages. I took them, along with the Lincoln Highway “loop” end at the other end of the state, in 2013 but never put them online.
- A mention, with one non-intersection photo, of IA 139 in Protivin.
- IA 183’s extensions down US 75 and the Lincoln Highway have more detail.
- A mention, but no photos, of IA 221 at US 69.
- IA 225 went into downtown Sully; I don’t know the exact intersection but do have a park photo.
- IA 229 went into downtown Garwin; I pulled a couple photos from RAGBRAI 2004.
- Information about IA 370’s quasi-decommissioning in 1980-83 was added.
- IA 385 ended at old US 34 before the Glenwood four-lane opened in 1974; since the location was the east end of IA 978, I just had to copy the photos.
- I added a photo of old IA 979 (former IA 1 through West Branch) at IA 38, which was the end of the unsigned route until 1980.
Finally, to clarify and simplify the page for IA 102’s original west end, I removed Jason Hancock’s photos from Pella since 102 did not go into Pella. On the east end, I added photos from May 2003 taken in New Sharon to illustrate the not-quite-decommissioning as well as the legal east end of the highway from 1980 to 1986.