October 20, 2018: …but when the roadgeek turned around from this view on 2nd Avenue South in Fort Dodge, the street had vanished! It was a ghost sign, disembodied from the route it once served!
While doing an online scouting of a route for my return from from the US 20 ceremony, I saw an unfamiliar squiggle in the map. I zoomed in and saw
a roundabout in downtown Fort Dodge. The city is calling it the “Cross-Town Connector” but it disconnected Second Avenue and left a former Fareway and now-closed gas station behind (see above). To the east, there’s another roundabout, at 1st Avenue South and South 12th Street.
The Iowa DOT gave up Business US 169, aka IA 926, formerly the easternmost part of IA 7 and part of US 20’s route through the city, in 2014. And this is what the city did with it — set up a jog after the Karl King Viaduct that takes the business route a block closer to the courthouse via a roundabout. The sign showing the turn from South 8th Street onto 1st Avenue South, instead of 2nd, was moved, but there is no sign on eastbound 1st at 8th, leaving a crucial turn un-marked.
(The modification took place in 2015 but some little birdies travel faster than others.) The Fort Dodge Highway Chronology will have to be re-edited for this.