August 24, 2013: A Lincoln Highway marker on Johnson Avenue NW in Cedar Rapids. US 30 used Johnson on its first alignment.
In an ode to a 102-year-old “Queen of Johnson Avenue” in Sunday’s Gazette, the writer mentioned this nugget:
Dorothy was very proud of the four-foot stone Highway 30 marker — one of the last ones of its kind in the area — located at the edge of her yard. It stood for decades and only came down recently when Johnson Avenue was being widened.
I realized I likely had photographed this very marker when I spent multiple days traveling the Lincoln Highway in Iowa in 2013.
Consulting a lost mystical text of the ancients called a phone book, I found what I was looking for. Dorothy Gongwer (listed, as is not uncommon among women of a certain age, under her deceased husband) held on to this piece of transportation history.
Johnson wasn’t widened, per se; it got turned into a two-lane with bike lanes and roundabouts. I hope that wherever the marker is, it will be taken care of as Dorothy took care of it.