Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

How hard could it be to trace a highway that, for the most part, is effectively barred from moving eastward because of the Mississippi River? Turns out, very. The flow of IA 99 between Davenport and Clinton changes channels much like the Missouri River did on the other side of Iowa, or the Lower Mississippi River. Here’s what I know, working south to north, in an expanded version of the IA 99 (1920) page.

• Before the 1920 system was created, the River-to-River Road used 2nd Street coming off the Government Bridge, then Main and 3rd. If you come off that bridge from Illinois, though, and head north instead of west, you’re on Le Claire Street, which while only two blocks long connects to 4th and the road to the town of Le Claire.
• Jason Hancock did the legwork in the Quad Cities area, and his research shows that 4th Street was the main east-west highway carrier. IA 99 would have first met IA 7, and probably IA 2 as well, on 4th Street at Perry Street. However, going west four blocks to 4th and Main would have enabled 99 to intersect IA 20 (future US 61).
• In early 1930, by which time the route would have lost any overlap, the last few blocks were moved south from 4th to 3rd.
• To the east in Bettendorf, today’s River Drive splits into one-ways, Grant Street and State Street. Here the 2020s intersect the 1920s: State Street has been chopped up to make way for the new I-74 bridge. The intersection of State and 14th became the foot of the Iowa-Illinois Memorial Bridge in 1935, and the northbound/Iowa-bound I-74 bridge’s offramp still met State there until recently.
• When 99 was here, using what’s now called Valley Drive, the incorporated communities of Riverdale and Panorama Park were not. Everything here, through Le Claire to Princeton, is part of the Pleasant Valley school district, one of Iowa’s suburban gainers in the 21st century. Valley Drive runs along the edge of the floodplain and was bypassed in 1959.
  • Panorama Park, incorporated in 1953, had a rocky start. Its mayor was charged “with using blasphemous and obscene language” after a tavern incident. The charges were dropped, said the Cedar Rapids Gazette on June 29, 1954. A month later, the town council imposed a levy to oil the one main road, which apparently made residents so mad they considered dissolving the town (Gazette, July 29).
• From I-80 to Le Claire, the road and the railroad have green space between. This is likely because there used to be two railroads — the Davenport, Rock Island, and Northwestern; and the Clinton, Davenport, and Muscatine. Both were there when 99 was paved in 1926…
• …but before that, 99 was on the other side of the tracks, jumping across them to use Canal Shore Drive, and going all the way to where that street dead-ends now. The DRI&N is now the Dakota, Minnesota, and Eastern.
• Mr. L. McWilliam lost his house to curve the road at 2nd and May streets in Le Claire.
• At about Territorial Road, 99 jumped the tracks again — or you could say the CD&M jumped 99, with the road now between the two railroads.
• The first route was River Drive in Princeton. I would guess that that segment started at the Cherry Street intersection, where River dead-ends, then all the way up to where River dead-ends again.
• The IHC paving plan in 1928 was used again for right-of-way expansion in the second half of 1941, but the certification wasn’t until 1952. That’s not uncommon, but I can’t tell if it was a wartime delay or not.
• The curve north of Princeton was sharper and closer to the lagoons until the 1980s. Then there was a serious kink at the Wapsipinicon River (below), with the raised roadbed still visible today. The pre-1929 route on the Clinton County side was to the east.
• Using 292nd Street through Folletts moved the RRX east.
• I’ve already confessed to being somewhat stumped about Camanche. I know the pre-1927 “in” on 3rd Street, but not the “out”. What’s on the 99 page is my best guess.
• IA 99 met the Lincoln Highway where US 30 and 67 meet today, then joined it into Clinton. It was cut back to here in the Great Truncation, then in 1927 re-extended downtown via Camanche Avenue. For more on that see the Clinton Highway Chronology.

Consider the condition of early 20th century roads and autos, and then consider driving to/from a narrow bridge with that kink at left there. (USDA photo, ca. 1938)