Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

September 1, 2009: Rochester makes an appearance on this sign heading north out of Luxemburg. I am not sure it is the first. For the rest of its route in Iowa, US 52 will run through, out of, and around the high hills of the Driftless Area.

May 13, 2002: North end of IA 146 in Le Grand, pre-bypass. The straight-through alignment of US 30 through Le Grand existed throughout the second half of the 20th century. Between the intersection here and Montour, though, there is some discrepancy as to the true route of the Lincoln Highway:

• The Lincoln Highway Map Pack uses T47 and the post-1954 alignment of US 30, running north then west from Montour to Le Grand, and never acknowledges the south alignment.
• But the first state map, in 1919, uses E49 and two miles of what is now IA 146. That road was marked as IA 6 in 1920.
• A Complete Official Guide of the Lincoln Highway (1924) also uses the latter route. The Lincoln angled off south of the point seen above to stay away from the railroad tracks. Later on, a bridge was built across the railroad tracks to the west, which stayed in use until 2004.
• Marshall County put up a marker in 1925 on the south alignment.
• The south alignment was the first US 30 and remained so until 1954.
• When the DOT signed the Lincoln Highway in the early 2010s, the north alignment was signed as the main route while the south route was designated a loop. The signed route uses the necessary deviation of crossing the railroad tracks on new 30, but then goes through Le Grand and rejoins the four-lane east of town.

Since the picture at top was taken, 146 has been extended northward a fraction of a mile past the East Marshall athletic complex to new 30.

June 24, 2003: West end of IA 145, one of three state highways in Fremont County killed off in the Second Great Decommissioning. Originally a spur to Thurman, after 1980 it connected US 275 and I-29.

December 8, 2002; July 29, 2010; July 6, 2011: Three views of northbound I-35 in northeast Hamilton County. This was the original junction with US 20, evident with the Pilot and older Boondocks truck stops at the interchange. Since the freeway west of I-35 was done much earlier than the route heading east, US 20 shared at least this portion of the interstate.

The first photo is the only on-site evidence of IA 928 (duplicated on the other signs). The road was unsigned otherwise. The second shows the same sign as it appeared in 2003-10, with the county road marked. That sign, possibly the biggest non-freeway-to-freeway BGS in Iowa, was replaced very early in the 2010s. Ellsworth is still in Iowa Falls — you have to follow old 20 — but for whatever reason it’s off the signs now. Iowa Falls is signed at US 20, so I guess this was a way of getting around the destination limit there. (But Iowa Falls was never signed in either direction at I-35 exit 147, where it’s a straight shot east. Go figure.)

By the way, the sign color doesn’t actually change. That is a result of photographing the spot with three different cameras, and also the time of day and season.

July 12, 2008: These one-panel sign sets are in Newport News, Virginia.

November 6, 2009: The left exit for US 65 north in Altoona was part of the original interstate construction. It made a lot of sense since the road underneath was not perpendicular to I-80 but at an angle. This enabled traffic to exit and merge without stopping.

However, after the beltway opened in 1994, it became problematic: Traffic merging from US 65 onto I-80 had to shift across three lanes of traffic within a mile to get to the exit. Increased traffic and increased dislike of left exits meant this ramp’s time was numbered. It was closed and removed in 2010. Now all traffic exits to an intersection with Hubbell Avenue.

There is a five (or so)-year plan in place to rebuild I-80 in this area, including a new interchange, expanding the mainline to six or eight lanes.