July 7, 2013: Preston’s Station in Belle Plaine as it appeared in the centennial year of the Lincoln Highway’s creation.
In 1924, the Lincoln Highway through Belle Plaine had almost nothing in common with what we think of as the Lincoln Highway there today. West of the intersection of 13th Avenue and 13th Street, it followed a different route. The main intersection in town was 12th Street and 8th Avenue, a block south and east of the present IA 21 four-way stop (and why today’s Lincoln Highway loop is offset to the east). It’s this alignment that became US 30 in late 1926.
George W. Preston, father of George H. Preston, was operating a station on the Lincoln Highway, but the fact it was at a different location can lend confusion to stories about its successor (see here and here and especially here).
Iowa Highway Commission Primary Road Project 504 cemented (literally!) the final highway alignment on the west side of Belle Plaine. Now US 30 would parallel the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad to a smooth curve northward before heading west to Chelsea. This project is digitized in the Iowa DOT document library. Once again, the Lincoln would run along 13th Street in the west half of town.
(Incidentally, this means the “First route” following the curve in the Lincoln Highway Iowa Map Pack is wrong; the first route was on 1st Avenue and the curve is a third route.)
The relocated highway opened on the Monday of Thanksgiving week 1927, according to the Belle Plaine Union. However, another change, relocating the rest of US 30 onto 13th Street east of 8th Avenue, was not complete. It happened before the beginning of August 1928, when the Union coupled an editorial about “sightly” and “descriptive” signs the Commerce Club erected pointing traffic south to the business district with speculation that one day the Lincoln Highway would bypass Belle Plaine entirely. (It would, in 1937, and everyone had to stop using “Highway 30” and “Lincoln Highway” interchangeably.)
It’s here that the Lincoln Highway story sets itself up for George H. Preston, who would get into the family business in 1930 and turn it into an iconic collection of highway history. It’s in the last paragraph of a four-paragraph city council story, Feb. 16, 1928:
“A permit was also issued to Mr. Geo. Preston to erect a filling station on the rear of his lot on the corner of 4th ave and 13th street…”
And now you know…the rest of the story.
(Thanks to the online archives of the Belle Plaine Union through Advantage Preservation, where the significant majority of this research came from.)
UPDATE 10/22/20: Added some street names in 1924 and corrected name of 21st Street.