Apr 23

Big 80/380 interchange meeting today

Posted on Monday, April 23, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff


September 30, 1970: Initial construction stage of the I-80/I-380/US 218 interchange in Johnson County, via Iowa Geographic Map Server. It was built as a cloverleaf, but US 218 to the south would come after I-380 opened.

You know it’s important when there’s going to be a formal presentation.

On Monday in Coralville, the Iowa DOT is going to have a public meeting regarding the complete reconstruction of the I-80/380 interchange that will last until the end of 2024. This meeting is for what’s going on this year; there will be similar meetings every spring. There’s some information about the overall project at a website set up specifically for it, but the press release says more will come Monday. (The press release messed up the weblink; here’s the correct one.)

Initial construction focuses on the Forevergreen Road exit, which will be needed as a relief valve, and the first flyover ramp from eastbound 80 to northbound 380 (the most important one).

This project adds to the list of ongoing multi-year major projects that are reshaping pieces of Iowa’s interstate highway system for the first time since their initial construction (Council Bluffs, Sioux City, and I-74).

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Apr 20

Kyle Munson’s last day at Register

Posted on Friday, April 20, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

The number of my former co-workers who remain at The Des Moines Register has taken a hit this year. No fewer than four (that I know of) have checked out in six weeks. That includes columnist Kyle Munson, whose last day is today.

Besides the column he wrote about me last year after I finished visiting every town in Iowa, my parents made a cameo appearance when he wrote about a movie being filmed in Tama County.

Munson has done two interviews with Iowa Public Radio about his departure.

(A comparison between the early 2015 staff directory and the ones three years before and after would be illuminating.)

Whenever I do get to that last mile in Correctionville, who am I going to tell?

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Apr 19

Little Lowden Lincoln Highway link lost

Posted on Thursday, April 19, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff


July 6, 2013: This malfunctioned photo is of the 155th Street bridge over Yankee Run near Lowden. It was a 15-ton limit then, lowered to 10 tons in 2014. Both the National Bridge Inventory and Bridgehunter say it was built in 1976, but I find this hard to believe.

On July 18, 2017, the Cedar County Board of Supervisors closed a small pony truss bridge on 155th Street just outside Lowden. They might not have known it, but the closure severed an original segment of the Lincoln Highway.

The pre-paving route of the Lincoln Highway between Clarence and Wheatland followed a “stairstep” route with at least a dozen turns. Part of that included what is now 155th Street between County Road Y24 and Union Avenue. In 1927, US 30 was paved across Cedar County, incorporating some diagonals and moving an at-grade crossing with the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad from 155th to a new overhead crossing at 150th.

When the Lincoln Highway was signed across Iowa this century, the west part of 155th wasn’t included, perhaps because of this bridge but more likely because the half-mile of Union Avenue is a dirt road. Gregory Franzwa’s 1995 book and the Iowa Lincoln Highway Map Pack both omitted this segment, but I have found confirmations of its inclusion until at least summer 1925.

(I spotted the closure and the removed bridge on on a recent drive. Conditions were basically identical to seven weeks ago when I went to see the Midland school building — cold, overcast, and spitting rain — and I was up earlier than usual, so more study wasn’t a priority.)

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Apr 18

Gladbrook school building: Now what?

Posted on Wednesday, April 18, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff


July 7, 2015: Will all or part of the Gladbrook school complex come down? It seems inevitable.

Of course, eventually, the question had to be asked. Now that the Gladbrook-Reinbeck school district will remain intact, what is going to be done with the closed building in Gladbrook?

GR (and North Tama) superintendent David Hill knows close up what happens through inaction: You get what happened to the Geneseo building, except worse since this one’s in the middle of town. A blog post last month from Hill says the city isn’t interested in taking over the whole building. However, the fitness center and pool remain in operation (answering an unasked question I alluded to earlier). The rest of the building, however, will need something done about it, and that means demolition.

Looking at the photo above, and thinking about the times I was at Gladbrook, it’s clear that this building and so many others could have had decades more of service. If only Iowa had enough children to fill them.

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Apr 17

Traer shaker gallery featured on WHO

Posted on Tuesday, April 17, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Ruth Rasmussen’s massive salt-and-pepper-shaker collection was shown on WHO last week, along with some footage of the Winding Stairs.

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Apr 16

Prelude to a deluge

Posted on Monday, April 16, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Snows in very early April are routine enough. Anything on or after the first day of Iowa Spring (April 15), though, is something to record. Dad did that.

apr1993snow1

Friday, April 16, 1993 … Last night we had an inch to two inches of snow, 30, 40 mile an hour winds … A lot of it melted because it’s been raining all day yesterday, raining the day before that, it’s been a miserable, muddy, wet spring. The sun is almost ready to come out; we haven’t seen it since Tuesday.

Twenty-five years ago, no one knew that a wet early spring and mid-April snowfalls were setting the stage for the Flood of 1993.

(That’s the Red Car in front, the one that a decade later was stolen in Omaha.)

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Apr 13

HMS bond issue passes

Posted on Friday, April 13, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

In a close to a mini-saga I’ve covered before, voters in the HMS school district finally approved an elementary school attached to the existing high school in Hartley and new classrooms/gym in Sanborn (story/schematics: KIWA).

This was the FOURTH vote on the bond issue. HMS said it would close Hartley Elementary if it passed and, after the third failure, went ahead and announced a 2019 closure anyway, as more extensively covered in the N’West Iowa Review.

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Apr 12

Two-year project maintains IA 122 one-ways

Posted on Thursday, April 12, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

I’m not quite sure why this isn’t listed on the DOT’s public information page, but this construction season is the first part of a two-year project to rebuild IA 122 in downtown Mason City.

The KIMT story has views of the map, whose most notable nugget is that the east end of the one-way will have the turn softened to a more gradual curve. But the one-way system stays intact, while recent projects in some cities intend to get rid of one-ways.

The Mason City project will take two years, and after that, here’s a question: Why should the state hold on to IA 122 east of downtown? Its current east end is the east city limits; the rest was peeled away in 2003. While it makes sense to keep the four-lane running east from I-35, which was US 18 until the Avenue of the Saints freeway was completed, I think the part running east of downtown would be a good urban decommissioning candidate. Even a partial truncation to, say, Illinois Avenue/Mason City High School still would get 3 miles off the books.

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Apr 11

Webster City to absorb Northeast Hamilton

Posted on Wednesday, April 11, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff


May 28, 2012: Northeast Hamilton completed a major construction project at the beginning of the decade, and then began sending high school students to Webster City in 2015. Now what happens to the Trojan?

The Northeast Hamilton school district formed in 1962 with an enrollment of 685 students. Fifty-five years later, it’s under 200, and near the end of the line as an independent district.

Only 15 voters out of 424 in the Webster City and NEH districts (out of 6742 registered) opposed consolidation effective in 2019, reports the Daily Freeman-Journal. NEH gave up its high school three years ago. The school in Blairsburg will remain as a K-6 site named, uh, “Learning Center at Northeast Hamilton”.

The combined district will span the northern half of Hamilton County (plus Duncombe). Since Stratford’s 7-12 students also go there, Webster City is the 11th-largest single-high-school area in the state.

(Thanks to a reader for alerting me to this vote, which I had forgotten about.)

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Apr 10

Tama County next to kiss its ash goodbye

Posted on Tuesday, April 10, 2018, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

A two-fer on the emerald ash borer front: Sites near each other in Le Grand served as the confirmation of the bug in Marshall and Tama counties.

Strictly speaking, Traer and Dysart are not within the treatment radius from this most recent discovery (see map, which will likely change at the next EAB find), but the southeast half of the state has enough infestations that it’s only a matter of time before the EAB shows up.

Cedar Rapids is taking out ash trees on Edgewood Road after the EAB was found there, reports KCRG.

(Is this from two weeks ago? Yes. Did I post this for the headline? Also yes.)

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