A revised design for Iowa’s license plates is being phased in next month, the Des Moines Register reported last week. (I honestly forgot this was happening.) Eight counties running low on inventory will get them first. A photo with the story shows GXV’s for Crawford County rolling down the line, which means that we’re going to have a random switch in mid-sequence (instead of, say, waiting for the H’s).
I ranted about the arbitrariness and mismatch nature of the current strategy last year.
March 16, 2018/June 27, 1930: “The Traer Star-Clipper is still ‘the best weekly newspaper in the United States,’ according to the judges of the annual contest conducted by the National Editorial association for the promotion of better weekly newspapers…”
Traer isn’t losing its newspaper, but it’s the next-worst thing. The office and home of the Traer Star-Clipper is going to be shut down at the end of the month, its functions moved to Tama. There will be no one in town putting out the town’s news every week.
The office isn’t what it used to be, even from when I popped in many days at a time to do research for some of my first published pieces. (At the end of the 20th century, I did countdowns of the most important school and athletic events. Ironically, I’d never done a deep dive for highway purposes … until last Friday.)
The closure means the end of a cherished small-town tradition — picking up the paper a day early. People would line up to get their news hot off the press. From 1894 to 1953, that meant standing on a winding staircase you might have heard about. After that, it was a little less dramatic, just walking into the current building (above).
Elmer E. Taylor, the second generation of the family that founded and ran the paper for more than a century, died three days after he retired. The paper hasn’t been locally owned for a long time; Ogden Newspapers owns it and every other weekly in Tama County. The Dysart Reporter’s base was relocated to Traer a few years ago.
My concerns next go to the bound volumes and card catalog (yes, there’s an index in a file cabinet, meticulously curated over decades). Not having those available — or worse, seeing them discarded — would be a deep blow to local history. It would be best for them to end up with the museum or library.
It’s the end of an era, and the end of my dream of one day winning Powerball and thinking it would be fun to run a newspaper.
UPDATE: The official announcement. “Exciting new changes” is, to put it mildly, an interesting choice of words.
UPDATE 4/13/26: Yes, eight years later. The Master Editor-Publisher award was given to Elmer E. Taylor Sr. in 1932 and Elmer E. Taylor Jr. in 1956. This blog post conflated the two. The offending sentence has been cut and the writer flogged.
GTE used to be a household acronym in much of rural Iowa; it was the phone company. At the turn of the 21st century, GTE’s Iowa assets were sold to Iowa Network Services, which within a year turned into Iowa Telecom. Iowa Telecom, in turn, got eaten up by Windstream in 2010.
But also spotted this month was one that’s making a Logan’s Run-esque escape from the authorities: a light-blue embossed numbers-first CTY. This plate would have been issued in Tama County in April 1997, making it old enough to buy a lottery ticket soon.
(I miss when counties got substantial blocks instead of a couple thousand at a time.)
In the opening credits of “The X-Files” (a show whose return didn’t conceal the fact it was old enough to have a theme song) is an intentional error I hadn’t noticed until this season.
The ID badges in the opening credits are for “Federal Bureau of Justice, United States Department of Investigation.” The IMDB says this is intentional because “making a fake FBI badge, even for fictional purposes, is illegal.” Tonight is the last time we’ll see those badges on screen, with the series finale (and they probably mean it this time).
(Now, how can I age half as well as Gillian Anderson? THAT is a mystery worth investigating.)
Construction of a new gymnasium to replace a “non-regulation” one is a major component of a bond referendum April 6 in the Graettinger-Terril school district.
A former school board member told the Spencer Daily Reporter that GT “is the only district in the state without a regulation gymnasium for competition.” I’m pretty sure that has to do with the size of the court. The pictures that scroll by on GT’s website show little margin for error on the sidelines — although I don’t see the special inbounds line like Wellsburg had in the ’90s. The note about “referees unfamiliar with officiating a non-regulation court” further lends itself to the size thing.
The bond issue would include new science classrooms and a new shop in addition to the gym. The Terril school will get some renovations as well, reports the Emmetsburg News.
Since so many schools built new gyms during the baby boom era, it would be interesting to poll the state and see whose active gyms for high school activities are the oldest, and which ones have different dimensions like GT’s.
Sidewalks are a good thing to have. In many towns, though, they could use some freshening up. However, a simple plan for improvements sooner or later will encounter the Americans With Disabilities Act. (And then there’s Windsor Heights, whose residents never had them and really really don’t want them.)
The state is ready to replace sidewalks along IA 9 and IA 76 in Waukon, but there’s a catch: Many trees that sit between the sidewalk and the road will have to be removed. One side of one block alone (PDF) will lose half a dozen trees.
There will be a nice place to walk and ride bikes, but no leafy mature trees to provide shade and pretty colors. Such is the nature of tradeoffs. (On the other hand, if they’re ash trees, perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise.)
In the Transportation Commission’s March meeting this week, a transfer of jurisdiction for US 61 in Des Moines County was approved.
But here’s the thing: It’s not the recently rerouted portion of 61 (which was in Louisa County). It’s not a project that will happen this year. This transaction was nearly $1 million for a road whose four-laning won’t be completed until 2021. As seen in the large environmental assessment (PDF) from 2015 that covers the expressway from Burlington to IA 78, not all of old 61 will be incorporated into new 61, nor will all of it be left behind. Part of it will be close enough to the new route to require little hiccups* to accommodate bridges, and part will be obliterated.
The EA linked above includes the Mediapolis bypass and four-lane 61 from there to Wapello, which are both only beginning to trickle into the five-year plan.
*Is there an actual term for this? I’m referring to where an otherwise straight-line frontage road has to curve. If there isn’t, I nominate “hiccup”.
A DOT public meeting earlier this week (postponed from earlier because of bad weather) laid out two “study areas” for a US 30 bypass of Missouri Valley, and one of them is off the beaten path.
Like, way off.
Like, redirecting 30 from Logan westward to Modale off.
I can see why there’s an interest in moving 30 out of downtown Missouri Valley, but a bypass that far north would not help anyone. Assuming a new connection is not built southwestward from Modale, a LOT of drivers would choose to follow K45 to continue west, and that has quite a few curves on it. It simply does not make sense to divert 30 back southeast on I-29 to acquire the old route. Plus, that alignment would cut straight through part of the Loess Hills instead of following the Boyer River valley like 30 does today.
A southern bypass makes way, way more sense. It’s close enough to the existing corridor that it wouldn’t be out of the way. Most of it would be in a floodplain (which, admittedly, has its own issues) and wouldn’t require knocking down many hills. Any bypass there would include two new railroad bridges.
I think the blue route on this map (PDF) is the way to go. For historical preservation purposes, it pulls “new 30” off a couple more miles of the original Lincoln Highway, but it also takes some kinks out, and the integrity of the road heading into Missouri Valley would remain.
Johnson Avenue in western Cedar Rapids carried the Lincoln Highway, and then US 30, until 1940. Back then, it was outside the city. Nowadays, it’s a minor urban arterial that’s about to be reduced in capacity.
The city of Cedar Rapids is using Johnson Avenue as a guinea pig in a “complete streets” program. According to the Gazette, the street will be reduced to two lanes with bike lanes and have roundabouts at Wiley Boulevard and Jacolyn Drive. There’s a cost savings in the change; the Wiley roundabout will be $91,000 less than having a stoplight, the story says.
There are other roads in the city where one or both of those things are going to be done to them, too (see list at link).
As far as I know, this is the first second time roundabouts have been installed on any era of Lincoln Highway alignment in Iowa.
UPDATE 4/16: Marion’s new roundabouts on either end of downtown put one on the 1913 route (now part of a loop) — the west one at 7th Avenue and 7th Street.
In the middle of World War II, 75 years ago today, the U.S. Naval Air Station opened north of Ottumwa. It served as a training site for cadets. The most famous Navy personnel to pass through were future president Richard Nixon (as an officer) and astronaut Scott Carpenter (as a cadet).
Wapello County got double duty out of the deal; even though the Navy relocated to Pensacola in 1947, what was left behind became the Ottumwa airport. Now people are restoring the administration building to remember this short but important moment in Iowa history.
A road to the air station was designated IA 380, one of 10 new numbers created during the war, and then redesignated IA 389 when the number was needed for I-380.
