In 2019, a construction project on the west side of Clinton sealed off an old routing of US 30 that retained original concrete. Now another project in the same area is obliterating historic concrete altogether.
Reconstruction of Manufacturing Drive started in March and will last two years. The entire road from US 30 to College Avenue is being ripped up and replaced.
The city appears to believe that “some of the sections of the road are over 100 years old,” since reporters use that phrasing in both a Clinton Herald story and a WHBF story — and it’s not true. Manufacturing Drive is nearly 100 years old. It did not exist until it was built in 1931 as a new alignment of US 30.
Looking at Google Street View from 2022, some of the two-lane concrete along parts of Manufacturing Drive that has more visible aggregate (rocks) in its composition would date to 1931. Its age is harder to pinpoint either because the raised-edge “Iowa Curbs” have long ago been shorn off or because by that time, the curbs were no longer included. I haven’t tracked down that many pieces of extant Depression-era paving to know.
Bluff Boulevard, at least the section used as the Lincoln Highway (5th Avenue South to 19th Street), was paved in 1921. However, I completely doubt that any concrete in use today on that stretch is original, because there’s no visible aggregate, the road is too wide (it wouldn’t have been three lanes, let alone four), and it has modern drainage features.
This is another construction project discovered in preparation for the Lincoln Highway Middle Third Tour. If I’d known that the concrete was that old and was going to be lost, I would’ve taken pictures.