The inspiration for my 2023 year-end column came from the very end of 2022, as I was making flight reservations.
It’s a good thing, I suppose, given what happened June 29.
I don’t expect to be able to take many, if any, multi-day road trips in 2024.
I have no idea what I’m going to do for the end of 2024.
Let the record show that Iowa plates reached the end of the N’s before the end of 2023.
What will the next leading letter be? That’s not necessarily an obvious answer, since the 1997 series jumped from N to P. With the slashed-zero mandatory, O may be palatable this time. We’ll find out soon enough.
Also, let the record show that Minnesota has copied Iowa on the blackout plates. The North Star State will be doing the same deal as Iowa, offering the white-on-black as a custom option.
(But maybe we can’t call it the North Star, or more accurately and Frenchly, L’etoile du Nord, anymore. Minnesota is in the final stages of cancelling its state flag and seal, and retaining the state’s official motto and year of statehood for the new ones was deemed too divisive.)
The school building in Rockford that was built in 1899-1900 to replace one destroyed in a fire burned down itself on Dec. 22.
This building in the center of town had been abandoned for some time. The “new addition” next to it was built in 1922. A new school on the east side of Rockford opened in 1962. That school burned down in 1989, and its replacement opened in 1991.
Floyd County Emergency Management has a photo of the fire and the city of Rockford also has a collection. They can be seen on KWWL’s website.
Going across the top of the state was pretty easy on my 2015 trip. Here’s a recap of Day 3.
An Associated Press article relating to the phrase “women and children first” that uses current events in the Middle East as a hook references the Titanic disaster. Of course I’m going to have to weigh in — and today happens to be the 26th anniversary of the movie’s release.
“Accounts differ, but testimony from the inquiries afterward indicates that someone or someones — from Capt. Edward Smith to various passengers — prioritized putting women and children into the lifeboats, of which there were not enough to evacuate everyone aboard. … The 1997 movie “Titanic” immortalized the order when actor Leonardo DiCaprio says the words “women and children first” during a key scene.”
That last sentence is wrong. DiCaprio’s character never says that. I say that not just because I can recite the whole movie by heart, but because the script IS AVAILABLE ONLINE. There are multiple differences between the final script and finished product due to last-minute rewrites, scenes left on the cutting room floor, and even improv.
All that had to be done, if the movie was going to be referenced at all, was to cite this scene:
The exchange above is nearly verbatim from Second Officer Lightoller’s testimony. Titanic survivor Col. Archibald Gracie did extensive research in the year following the disaster, and published a book before he died. Lightoller was women-and-children-first (and perhaps only) on the port side while First Officer Murdoch was women-and-children-then-men on the starboard side. See pages 114-118 in this version at the Internet Archive. I HIGHLY recommend the whole thing.
The incorrect DiCaprio reference pops up in a Quora response at the top of a Google search, and I hope that’s not what the AP based it on. Frankly, the amount of times that Quora or Reddit links show up at the top of Google searches is concerning.
December 18, 2006: The approach to the BNSF Fort Madison bridge as seen from the Illinois side.
Iowa’s second-oldest existing bridge across the Mississippi River is going to cost more to cross.
The bridge at Fort Madison, the only toll bridge on Iowa’s east side, isn’t state-owned. It’s part of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway. Even when this location was the east end of IA 2, the bridge technically marked the end of that route.
The toll for cars went from $1 to $2 on March 1, 2012, a KHQA story from that year said. Radio Iowa reports that on Jan. 1, the toll will go to $3. WGEM adds that the toll will go to $4 on Jan. 1, 2025.
The City Development Board approves actions related to municipal boundaries in Iowa, which makes it an important source for annexations and discontinuations. The board’s website is pretty good at posting agendas and minutes, but no additional information is included. This makes it tricky when I see an entry for an annexation and have no idea what area of land is being talked about.
For example, the September minutes included annexation items for Sioux City, North Liberty, Fairfax, Cedar Rapids, and Des Moines. This point is where I have to start digging into city council minutes and hope the cities in question have “best practices” on public records. I also have to kind of guess that I have the “right” annexation when it comes to cities that do it on a regular basis. I’ve asked if maps could be included on the CDB’s website and was told that won’t happen.
This blog post is going to talk about what might be the smallest addition ever to Iowa’s largest city. It’s not an empty space for building a dozen houses. It’s not one house. It’s not even an alley. It’s the space between the Days Inn and south side of the Taco Bell parking lot on Merle Hay Road. If you scan around on Street View there’s one tiny clue of the change between Des Moines and Polk County jurisdiction: The curb on the frontage road disappears.
A Des Moines City Council packet from June 12, about a hearing on the annexation, highlights the parcel on Page 3 (above). The right-of-way parcel for Merle Hay Road adjacent to it is at/near Des Moines’ northernmost extent.
The only way Des Moines can expand northward is through small acquisitions like this, although this one is really tiny. East of the Des Moines River, most of the city’s northern border has been stuck at Aurora Avenue since 1890. The GIS map for the county at NW 6th Drive, for example, shows the teal city border running down the middle of Aurora Avenue. Each parcel is outlined in red.
If we assumed each house was on an equal-sized portion of land (they’re not, but work with me here), an “80/20” annexation means 4 of 5 landowners in a given area would have to want to be annexed by the city. Each individual landowner could request annexation, but the city isn’t going to grow by leaps and bounds (or even tens of acres) that way. This also explains why Ankeny keeps adding to its southeast but can’t swallow Saylorville.
Did you know that when the (first) Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869, there was no connection between Omaha and Council Bluffs? A bridge wouldn’t be built for three years.
The story of that bridge, and how it took a whole bunch of legal work for Council Bluffs to be confirmed as the first eastern terminus of the Union Pacific, is covered in my Substack post.
As always, this is part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, which has added some new writers in the past couple of months.
In September, the state’s City Development Board approved Cedar Rapids’ annexation of 3241 Blairs Ferry Rd. NE. One property, singular.
Screencap via Linn County GIS website
The long driveway in the middle goes to First Assembly of God Church, which owns the property. Hiawatha is on the north side of Blairs Ferry, which put this property between two cities but also made it an unincorporated island.
There’s also a collection of islands/trapped land southwest of the intersection of Edgewood Road NE and 42nd Street NE. Developments between Blairs Ferry Road and IA 100 west of Ushers Ferry Road, as well as undeveloped land south of Xavier High School, aren’t technically islands, just never added to the city.
(Delayed until I needed fillers. — Ed.)
Despite annexations in the southwest quadrant of Cedar Rapids over the past half-decade, the city limits have never touched Fairfax. The right-of-way for Williams Boulevard (US 151) around the intersection with Stoney Point and Beverly roads remains part of unincorporated Linn County.
This summer, however, the cities found a common boundary — to Fairfax’s southeast.
In July and August, the Fairfax City Council introduced and approved annexation of land between the CRANDIC Railroad and 76th Avenue SW. At the same time, Cedar Rapids was working on an annexation just to the east of that. The latter annexation, which Cedar Rapids approved on Sept. 26, moves past a previous line the two cities had agreed on. The annexation plan also involves a large study about water consumption for the area because Cedar Rapids wants to add its section to an industrial park.
These annexations automatically preclude the cities from joining together at Williams Boulevard. The area at the Williams/Stoney Point/Beverly intersection will be the only connection from an area of unincorporated Linn County between the CRANDIC and US 30 to the rest of the county. (Technically, there are two intersections of Williams and Beverly, to avoid a skewed-angle intersection.) The situation is exactly identical to why the US 65 beltway in Polk County can’t be annexed by anyone.
Unrelated to the above, Cedar Rapids also annexed a small parcel of land west of what’s now named 80th Street Lane. There’s a finger of city land going up the relocated 80th Street SW to E Avenue and this adds to that. However, Morgan Creek Park remains half-in/half-out.
