Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

November 29, 2002 (open picture in new tab for larger version)

The George Preston station in Belle Plaine is one of Iowa’s best-known Lincoln Highway landmarks. He tacked up signs for just about anything road-related, or that you’d buy on the road. When I took pictures at the station in 2002, I had the luck of meeting his son, Ron, who had carried on his father’s legacy. Ron died in 2011, and much of the memorabilia the two had collected was auctioned in 2012.

The garage looks a little different now, with signs for IA 21, IA 131, US 30, and Iowa Scenic Byway on the doors.

August 8, 2009

East of Cedar Rapids, Mount Vernon Road had a little hiccup in its straightness that was ironed out by the late 1930s. The segment left behind between 44th Street and Wilder Drive is named Lincoln Heights Drive, reflective of its role as part of the Lincoln Highway. However, the original Lincoln didn’t run here; it went through Marion instead.

The Lincoln Highway in Linn County played a background role in Iowa’s last major county-level political change: Cedar Rapids replaced Marion as the county seat in 1919, and Mount Vernon Road was paved eastward to the “Seedling Mile” two years later.

In the 1920s, convincing Iowans to get the state “out of the mud” was a project nearly as herculean as building the roads themselves. But as a few pieces were finished here and there, the lesson became very clear. As Pete Davies put it in the book American Road, pavement was power.

Object Lesson: The Seedling Mile in Linn County (PDF)

The Lincoln Highway Association has a zoomable, detailed, nationwide overlay on Google Maps of the 1913 Lincoln Highway and some subsequent iterations.

I do see one potential issue in Iowa related to the railroad crossing west of West Side, but there are some clarifications/corrections to my earlier thoughts, including some stubs in Loveland that were there before former IA 183 hugged the railroad closer at a curve, and the Honey Creek Cut.

Now if only I knew how to create a Google Map that used that many points, lines, and details.

The intersection of Main and Harding in the north part of Clinton, formerly the town of Fulton, is where the Lyons-Fulton bridge reached Iowa after crossing the Mississippi River (and following a long dogleg). This is a few blocks north of where IA 136 crosses the river now.

This picture was taken before official Lincoln Highway signage was put up, but there’s a loop that comes through here before returning to 136 to enable the route to continue into Illinois.

July 2, 2009: US 30 and the Lincoln Highway are still together in Canton, Ohio.

June 13, 2011: For a fraction of a mile in Plainfield IL, two of America’s most historic roads come together.