On the official state transportation map, the highway on the corner of Iowa’s floor was stable for 20 years. There was only one change to IA 333 marked between 1943 and 1964: It was straightened to miss College Springs and go east to US 71 near Braddyville in 1949-51, a three-year flip that looks innocent enough. But what the maps don’t show is a fierce persistence from Page and Fremont counties pressuring the Iowa Highway Commission to get “three-dirty-three” out of the mud, and how geology, funding variabilities, and sleight-of-hand in the records collided into a mess that would not be sorted out for decades more.
In April 1946, Page County found out that in October 1945, the Highway Commission had straightened 333 away from College Springs, to use the “Goldenrod” road a mile from the state line. Notice this is before any change was shown on the map.
The authorized change would make No. 333 directly across the southern part of Page county, over what is known as the Goldenrod, officially marked on county maps as county road G. (Clarinda Herald-Journal, April 8, 1946)
But here’s the problem: According to the online route description, 333 was routed straight east to US 71 and also into College Springs. In effect, the route had been forked, at least on paper. After a year of pressure, the commission reverted its change…mostly.
In other words, the gravel from College Springs to Highway 71 south of Shambaugh will again be a state highway and the road from the town south to the Goldenrod will become a county road, the Goldenrod remaining under state maintenance. (Clarinda Herald-Journal, February 24, 1947, emphasis added)
So … what was the number of the road running north and east from College Springs? It couldn’t become IA 84 again; that number had been immediately recycled to run from Cedar Rapids to the city airport on what now is Sixth Street SW and County Road E70. (The Gazette reported on November 18, 1943, that traffic on Sixth Street SW at the intersection “of No. 84 and 381” would get stop signs instead of the east-west road to the airport.) But neither did it become IA 393, the next number up.
Yet the Herald-Journal December 13, 1948, under the banner headline “College Springs Road in Primary System,” said:
State highway 84 into College Springs will be repaired and the road south of College Springs to highway 333 will be included in the primary road system.
This closed the gap between College Springs and the Goldenrod. The 1949-50-51 state maps show only IA 333 running due east-west across the county. But what about the road through College Springs to Shambaugh that residents just lobbied so hard to get? It doesn’t exist on the map, but it exists in internal Highway Commission files. At the end of the 1949 traffic book (large PDF) — the first evidence available online — we meet IA 999.
I told you it was weird.