Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

While working on some updates for the 1920 highway series, I noticed a curious thing on the 1920 state map: IA 6 between Grand Junction and Ogden is in the wrong place.

By “wrong”, I mean that the blue line I’ve drawn in, a mile north of present US 30 and then on the north side of the railroad near Grand Junction, was the official 1915 route of the Lincoln Highway. This is mentioned in the August 15, 1915, Grand Junction Globe, where a letter from Iowa State Consul W.F. Coan of Clinton confirmed the “north route” and said “It was an oversight in not notifying the Detroit office that Beaver was not on the official route …”. It’s also confirmed by the existence of three bridges — two Lincoln Highway-specific bridges built in 1915 and one Marsh rainbow arch from 1919 — on the north route.

But then a curious story appears in the June 4, 1919, Jefferson Bee:

Changes Lincolnway; Rumor Grand Jct. is cut off
Famous route now passes through south suburbs of that town on its way west.

According to an article in the Ogden Reporter there has been a change in the Lincoln Highway, through eastern Greene county, which takes the famous route off the main street of Grand Junction and puts it in the south suburbs thereof. …

“The route of the Lincoln Highway leading out of Ogden has recently undergone a radical change. The south road, or old Continental Trail has been selected from Ogden to a point one mile east of Beaver. Here the road will follow an entirely new course, following the Northwestern railroad on the south side through the J.R. Doran farm. Again taking up the old Trans-Continental road at the west of Beaver and following it to a point one mile east of the Greene county line. Here an entirely new course has been made. The road will take a course one mile south and thence west until it meets the road leading out of Grand Junction and straight west to Jefferson.

[“]Action upon the change in the route of the Lincoln Highway was made before any one in this community was aware of the fact that a change was contemplated. The contention of the highway commission is that it eliminates two dangerous grade crossings and shortens the distance between Ogden and Grand Junction nearly two miles. The elimination of grade crossings and the shortening of the route is going to be an iron clad policy of both the state highway commission and the Lincoln Highway Association.

[“]The change of the route will place the town of Beaver on the national highway and will practically leave Grand Junction off the road. The new route will carry the road along the extreme south side of Grand Junction, making a straight line with the road as it runs south from that town and west on a direct line to Jefferson.[“]

A similar story appeared the same day in the Jefferson Herald.

There’s a problem with this change: There was not, nor has there ever been, a road on the section line on the south side of Grand Junction. To follow this new route would have required four turns in a 1.5-mile segment using 228th Street. In addition, if this alignment depended on straightening the road at Beaver, and note the story says south side of the tracks and not the section line, that would not happen until later.

It’s very likely that in 1920, IA 17, coming up from Rippey on what’s now P46, would have turned west to skip across the “south suburbs” of Grand Junction on its way to Jefferson. But the Lincoln? I have my doubts. I believe the brown route shown on the map was used as both IA 6 and the Lincoln Highway in 1920.

As you might imagine, this didn’t sit well with Grand Junction. The town immediately sought to get the highway back, and won, as reported in the Bee on September 1, 1920 and subsequent Greene County Supervisors minutes from September 23 printed in the Bee on October 13. At that meeting, the supervisors agreed to relocate the route back onto Grand Junction’s Main Street and east to Ogden, bypassing Beaver to the south.

The oldest Iowa Highway Commission blueprint from the area clearly marks the now-abandoned grade on the north side of the railroad “present road”, but I will allow the caveat that there is no hard date on it. The Bee on January 5, 1921 notes a deal between the Boone County supervisors and Justin Doran of Beaver (remember him above?) to allow the Lincoln Highway to go straight through his land “with the understanding that the road be constructed during the year 1921.” It might have taken another year, because the 1915 “north route” was not deleted from the Boone and Greene county maps until the end of 1922.

In conclusion, if a “south route” was used as the Lincoln Highway/IA 6 and not just proposed, it only happened for a very short period, and there’s the possibility that the IHC altered its routing but the LHA did not.