Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

June 22, 2013

This is what’s left of the Honey Creek Cut, in public view anyway. At the time, it was much deeper and considered a notable work of engineering. However, the cut was bypassed by the end of the 1920s. You can see a bit of the loess soil near the top center of the picture.

The remnants of the cut can be reached via the recently opened Hitchcock Nature Area RV campground. To the northwest, plainly visible from the air but not accessible, are two telegraph/telephone poles.

With that, I’ve shown a little something of or about the Lincoln Highway in every county the route goes through. I took hundreds of pictures over the course of 3½ days, capturing as many aspects as I could of the historic road at its centennial. It would be nice to compile them, along with others, into a book, but I’d need some help doing that. (If you can offer advice, let me know.)

Don’t expect a Nebraska picture tomorrow. This blog will be on hiatus for a little bit.

July 5, 2013: In downtown Carroll, the city erected special Lincoln Highway pillars at intersections between 3rd Street and the courthouse. One has a time capsule.

(Just because I skipped a day doesn’t mean I should skip a county. Oops!)

June 22, 2013

The Iowa Welcome Center/Lincoln Highway Interpretive Center northeast of Missouri Valley is a definite stop for any traveler. A film inside the welcome center, as well as the displays and representations of the early days of highway travel, are all worth seeing.

The picture above shows the evolution of surfacing, laid right on an old grade of the Lincoln Highway (a part of Monroe Avenue used to curve right instead of left as part of the route). You can walk from dirt to gravel to brick/concrete to asphalt. On the side are scaled-down replicas of a bridge, tourist cabin, and gas station typical of the era. The bridge leads to a kids’ play area on winding roads complete with a set of Burma-Shave signs.

Much of the signed Lincoln Highway between Missouri Valley and Dunlap is gravel, moved west and diagonalized in later stages. It’s narrow and not always straight, either, a contrast even to the 10 miles of gravel between Westside and Carroll.

Hold on, because this may get confusing, and I haven’t had time to make maps yet.

The presumed route of the Lincoln Highway heading out of Denison from the present north US 30/59 intersection was southwest on later-abandoned concrete around a motel, Boyer Valley Road between two sets of railroad tracks, and then (of course) gravel Lincoln Way away from the railroad and then back paralleling the railroad into Arion.

Well, in the 21st century signage of the route, a substantial part of the Lincoln Highway isn’t on Lincoln Way at all. Instead, from the north 30/59 intersection, the route follows present-day 30 southwest to Q Avenue, then crosses the railroad tracks, then heads southwest on gravel.

To further complicate the issue, the 1912 Trans-Continental Route guide has the road entering Denison from the south side, south of the tracks, using now-abandoned roads between US 59 and Main Street, and a 1920 Crawford County plat book doesn’t show a road in the present-day Boyer Valley Road place at all.

What I do know is that US 30 was paved through Crawford County in 1929. By no later than the late 1930s, from 4th Avenue and 7th Street, the concrete followed an arching path across the Boyer River (concrete that would remain until the 1990s), intersect Boyer Valley Road at a Y intersection, cross the Chicago and Northwestern (now Union Pacific) double tracks on an overpass, and then have another Y intersection with the road going south to Harlan.

From the south Y, US 30 then went southwest, and that road exists today as Chamberlin Drive.

June 22, 2013

In this picture, facing west, you can see the original concrete in the middle of the road, with a slightly different shade of gray on either side. That comes from shaving down the “Iowa curbs” and widening the road. Most (but not all) of the shortcut curve from northeastbound 30 to southbound old US 59 exists, as does some of the north-south concrete, now dead-ending at a house.

Is today’s Lincoln Way not signed on Boyer Valley Road because of a desire not to put more traffic on a road that goes between railroad tracks and then intersects a heavily-traveled route where left turns would be involved? Or is it because in at least one iteration, the south route was the Lincoln? More research will be required.

(Oh, and despite the few streets in Arion for the Lincoln to follow, there may be multiple permutations there too.)