May 7, 2018: Just inside the city limits of Lone Tree is a brand new Casey’s. This photo was taken for my IA 405 page.
Iowa’s homegrown gas station chain, Casey’s, is marking its 50th anniversary this year. In the run-up to the anniversary, new locations appeared in the minority of Iowa towns with a population between 1000 and 5000 that didn’t have one already:
- West Union in 2014
- Carter Lake in 2016, right up against the Nebraska land border and near the Super 8
- Monona in 2017
- Lone Tree in February 2018
- Postville in March 2018, a return with a new building after an earlier store was rebranded as a Guppy’s on the Go
- Greene this summer, exact date unknown
- and Ida Grove in July 2018.
The Ida Grove location is notable for a couple of reasons. First, it narrows the list of county seats without one to four — Elkader, Keosauqua, Logan, and Primghar — among the smallest in Iowa. Second, according to my research, that leaves Windsor Heights as the only city in Iowa with a population above 2000 without one — and that barely counts as there’s one at 1st Street and Grand Avenue over the city line in West Des Moines.
With that spate of openings, there’s one more pertinent data point (to me, anyway) — Traer is now the fourth-largest city in Iowa without a Casey’s. Traer already has two gas stations, used to have three, and has its pizza needs filled via Pizza Palace, so I understand the chain’s non-presence.
I have taken many, many trips around Iowa where Casey’s is the only place to eat for dozens of miles on my route. I just can’t stop there any time I go home.