October 9, 2018: Model T’s drove on this bridge over Big Whisky Creek in Woodbury County, right near the place Correctionville Road dips closest to present US 20.
One of the last two remaining pieces of one of Iowa’s first major rural paving projects will disappear around the time it turns a century old.
Woodbury County jumped on the Good Roads movement early. By the time of the birth of the US highway system, there were already three concrete roads running out of the city, to Cushing, to near Hornick, and to Sloan. The first of those became US 20.
As late as the middle of this decade, the long-bypassed concrete remained active pavement for much of Correctionville Road between Moville and Sioux City. It was a patchwork of patchworks, but the remaining “Iowa curbs” and narrow width shouted to all motorists that this was an old road.
Woodbury County buried the old concrete road under an asphalt overlay in 2014. A culvert near Lawton was replaced. That leaves a bridge about halfway between the US 75 freeway and Lawton.
Under Woodbury County’s five-year secondary roads construction program approved last April, this bridge will be replaced in fiscal 2023 for $800,000.
The other place original concrete still existed in the mid-2010s, the segment east of L51 east of Cushing, was removed as part of construction of new four-lane 20. There is one more that will be discussed in the next blog post.