Labels are important when creating maps. This is an obvious truth, but I have a habit of missing the forest for the trees. Thus, when I created highway chronologies, I didn’t really consider the idea that my maps could be disassociated from their context and appear as standalone images elsewhere. This dawned on me after discovering that my 1925 map of Waterloo-Cedar Falls made it into a National Register of Historic Places application for “Historic and Architectural Resources of Downtown Waterloo” (very large PDF).
Naturally, I am thrilled by this recognition and citation. However, it’s also a reminder that I have to be on my game. I have now gone through all of those maps and squeezed in a notation about what metro area is being featured, rectifying the oversight of (gulp) nearly 15 years ago in some cases. Similarly, I squeezed in a title in the maps for Iowa’s four-lane highway progress while updating the 2019-and-beyond section.
I’ve also fixed some glaring and not-so-glaring typos on assorted 1920 system pages, clarified IA 40 in St. Ansgar, and added notes to IA 10 and IA 26 in light of newly seen construction documents.