Category Archives: Iowa Miscellaneous

If you want food along the IA 48 corridor, your options are more limited. KMA Radio reports that Shenandoah and Red Oak are going to lose their Burger King restaurants on Monday. They’re the only locations in Iowa south of … Continue reading →

September 17, 2014: There are no paved streets in Conway, although from 1935-61 it was the east end of IA 319. Iowa’s third-smallest town is going to be no more. The City Development Board agenda for last week’s meeting has … Continue reading →

My visit to Van Buren County on Jan. 18 was a two-fer for stories. The Historic Hills Scenic Byway coordinator made the Iowaville presentation the cornerstone of a two-day, multiple-location tour of sites along the byway. This second presentation, in … Continue reading →

A visit to Lacey-Keosauqua State Park kicked off the first of what I hope will be multiple stories of Iowa history related to Iowa Scenic Byways and America 250. The presentation focused on an Ioway village rediscovered a few decades … Continue reading →

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources does NOT want you to say that when you see a bobcat, but LOOKIT. When I saw “Meet Comet” in the alert, I thought it had to be a sports-related name, and yes, this … Continue reading →

Like half of Iowa’s counties this year (this month, specifically), Crawford County turns 175 years old. KTIV did a story about the celebration and an abbreviated version aired on KCCI and KCRG. It mentions Abraham Lincoln’s Black Hawk War grant … Continue reading →

For Christmas, here’s what I wrote after Thanksgiving about the Canadian Pacific Kansas City’s Holiday Train stop in Bellevue. Jackson County is the 14th county in Iowa I’ve written a Substack story from.

Erin Kiernan is voluntarily leaving WHO in Des Moines to spend more time with her family — and that’s in the most positive way possible. The TV staff surprised her with a seven-minute farewell segment. Today is her last broadcast. … Continue reading →

John Fitzsimmons of Boone, a longtime member of the Lincoln Highway Association, died Saturday. He had a blog he occasionally posted to from 2016 to 2021. He billed himself as a “vagabond road artist”.  I last saw him at the … Continue reading →

This story was entirely dumb luck (stopping at a Marion Kum & Go that was in the process of becoming not-a-Kum-&-Go) followed by the usual “This data set has to exist somewhere. It doesn’t? Guess I have to find out myself.” … Continue reading →