Two former state highways in Iowa owed their existence to manufacturing.
One of them stuck around until the Second Great Decommissioning. IA 386 was an oddball route that had both ends facing southwest. There’s only one thing of note along its 2.7-mile route: The John Deere Dubuque Works.
1953
The other, the first IA 396, is much more obscure, only around six years. Its number was immediately recycled, so it had no lasting effect on the Iowa map. Jason Hancock was pretty sure it ran along North 19th Avenue East and East 8th Street North in Newton. And at that intersection we find…well, I already spoiled it in the headline.
Maytag Company Builds $5,000,000 Factory at Newton
The Maytag company will construct a $5,000,000 plant at Newton, Iowa, according to an announcement made this week by Fred Maytag, president of the company. The organization … has maintained a plant in this community since the first Maytag washing machine was manufactured in 1907.
— Dixon Evening Telegraph, Dixon IL, May 6, 1948 (garbled OCR text edited)
Maytag announced a new factory in 1948, and IA 396 was designated in 1948, running right past the spot where a shiny new industrial complex appears in 1950s aerial photos. Awfully coincidental, don’t you think? This blog post is speculation, but I think there’s pretty strong evidence.
Today, something like this would not get its own number. It would be handled through the Revitalize Iowa’s Sound Economy (RISE) program, created in 1986 to “promote economic development in Iowa through the establishment, construction, and improvement of roads and streets.”
It’s not the Maytag factory anymore. Whirlpool slammed the door on it shortly after buying the company. Newton has gone all out in efforts to find tenants to fill the sprawling space; just last April a commercial real estate firm announced Maytag Plant 2 was refurbished for use.
Jason also notes that IA 387, which went to the Davenport Municipal Airport, passed a Caterpillar factory, but the state once had highways running to or past every airport of marginal size.