Category Archives: 1920 Highway Sytem

September 13, 2015: Of all the routes listed below, IA 93’s west end and IA 96’s east end are the only endpoints that retain both their number and location from 1920. Four other endpoints have the same location but different … Continue reading →

I used an unscientific formula to “rank” the primary routes from 1920, from the least to the most important. That will be a framework for blog posts about the system. The smallest spurs to the smallest towns, not surprisingly, fill … Continue reading →

In 1920, Iowa was the 16th-largest state in the country by population. That population was as distributed as it was ever going to be, as many rural counties had peaked in population 20 years earlier and were already starting to … Continue reading →

As you saw in the glossary post, this stuff can get into the weeds. I admit that some of the things I’m researching, I’ve done over a longer time span than the roads in question officially existed. Here I want to … Continue reading →

This is an explainer for pages about the routes that made up Iowa’s 1920 highway system. It’s designed to augment, but definitely not replace, Jason Hancock’s and my websites. “In 1920, they knew it as”: Did the highway follow, or … Continue reading →

It’s a project 100 years in the making. Or 20. Or five. Since the fall of 2001 I have been chronicling the endpoints of current highways in Iowa. It’s something that has both reached backwards in time (for older ends … Continue reading →

Langland Lands Powerful Blows (Ames Tri-Weekly Tribune, February 19, 1919) Ole Langland, editor of the Cambridge Leader, takes some awful wallops at Ames people for wanting the Jefferson highway to pass through Ames in place of making the zig-zag through … Continue reading →