August 14, 2005: For an awkward time after the Second Great Decommissioning, Louisa and Des Moines counties tried this “neither-fish-nor-foul” naming convention. It was particularly odd in this case, when IA 79 had been J20 before 1980.
All of this has changed. US 34 is now on a freeway to the north, while J20 runs west. The designation for old 34 is unknown.
October 29, 2004: East end of IA 78 in Louisa County. The mileage sign in the background shows the distance to…nothing. Instead of covering up the top line, the “99” on the shield was removed when IA 99 was decommissioned.
The Des Moines Register reports that the Federal Highway Administration has approved plans for the Alice’s Road interchange on I-80. It is scheduled to open within two years.
This is the recently built Alice’s Road bridge as seen from the rest area in mile 118 in July 2010. Here’s an aerial view. It seems like it would be difficult to put an interchange there, let alone “open hundreds of acres for development,” without removing the rest area.
If you zoom out from that view, you can see how open the area is…for now. But just as urban sprawl has consumed the I-35 rest area near Ankeny, this one is likely doomed as well.
Expanding on my post from yesterday, here’s a more expansive breakdown.
In 2002-03, Class A had 67 teams. The 8-man (technically “8-player”, since girls play football too) class expanded from 26 to 40. In 2012-13, those classes will have 63 and 70, respectively. Teams that used to be in 1A have fallen to fill the gap.
Of those 67 teams:
Whereas the early 8-player districts were in western and southern Iowa, the class now extends the width and breadth of the state, from Nishnabotna (Hamburg/Farragut) in the southwest to Kee High in the northeast.
The smallest class now has the most teams. From 4A on down, the breakdown is 47-56-56-56-63-70. (The 47 will become 48 in 2013.)
UPDATE: A version of my writeup on this was posted on the Register’s website.
June 12, 2005: North end of US 77 in Sioux City. It comes across the Missouri River and ends. Even at its greatest extent, though, 77 only went through Sioux City, and so IA 77 was never renumbered.
Since Jason Hancock and I went through Sioux City to cover the area, the entire interchange has been put under reconstruction. This sign doesn’t exist anymore. Southbound I-29 now has the US 77 exit as part of the Hamilton Boulevard interchange.
North Tama has never lost to Gladbrook-Reinbeck in football — but the neighboring schools haven’t played each other in a decade. That’s about to change as part of the old North Iowa Cedar League is reunited in the new Class A District 4. District assignments were released today. (PDF)
There’s a bit of the South Iowa Cedar League in there too with Belle Plaine and Iowa Valley. (The NICL and SICL are for everything except football, but NT and GMG have both migrated to the Iowa Star Conference.) It’s NT’s most geographically compact football district in years.
In that hiatus, NT won a state championship and GR played in one.
GR and BCLUW are both coming down from Class 1A, while two of last year’s opponents, Central of Elkader and Valley of Elgin, are going down to 8-man. In fact, of the 16 teams in 8-man Districts 3 and 4, North Tama played half of them in the past decade.
The hidden story overall is the continued fall of the smallest of the small. Of the nine schools that made up Class A District 3 in 2004-05, all but Postville will be playing 8-man football in 2012-13, including NU High, whose home games are in the UNI-Dome. There are now 70 teams in that classification.
As of now, the North Tama-Central game at Elkader last year was the last 11-man game played in the Clayton County seat. It was an NT shutout.
Also of note, Class 4A is now broken into districts without relation to geography.
September 2, 2009: On the northwest side of Waukon — you can see it on the map — IA 76 makes a turn off A52 (old IA 9) and heads for Minnesota. The unique characteristics of this sign are the inclusion in the first place of “Minn. St. Line” and the listing of a closer destination at the bottom.
The entire route of IA 76, but especially the segment north of Waukon, has some of the best scenery in Iowa. It’s the edge of the Driftless Area, a section of northeastern Iowa that was not ground into submission by the glaciers. (A USGS writing says the glaciers didn’t come at all.) There aren’t any straight lines here; the road hugs every hill. I drove it shortly after it was repaved, and it was beautiful.
OK, not really. (Note: From Hulu. May not work in Firefox.)
“At the Tama County Fair, I sampled a local dessert specialty: a 3-pound stick of butter coated with Crisco, then deep-fried, dipped into a mixture of olive oil and Ranch dressing and covered with butterscotch frosting. Only later did I learn that this was not an Iowa delicacy, and that I had been the victim of a prank by a local branch of the College Democrats. Still, even as I lay on a cot in a first aid tent, vomiting convulsively, I had to say to myself: ‘I wouldn’t trade this for the world.'”
This loses some of its humor when you know that the Tama County Fair is a 4H-only event and available food comes from either the Lions Club in the main building or the candy/freeze-pop trailer. Do the College Democrats at UNI count as a local branch? Regardless, this is, by far, the most prominent appearance of the Tama County Fair in anything.
Also getting name-dropped: Polk, Cass, and Humboldt.
May 10, 2007: US 75 at MN 171 near the Canada border. Although the picture shows a double arrow, US 75 to the left of this picture is a giant dead-end. It’s been that way for nearly a decade, since the closing of the border station in favor of only having the one at I-29.
It’s a little strange and perhaps silly to have the “King of Trails” broken internationally when there is an obvious solution. Just reroute 75 on 171, into North Dakota, and enter Manitoba with I-29 and US 81. After all, MB 75 remains the expressway to Winnipeg.
First, there was stridently anti-BCS/pro-playoff AP columnist Jim Litke:
Oklahoma State, meanwhile, finished 4-0 against teams in the final Top 25 and likely would have claimed Alabama’s spot in the title were it not for an emotional overtime loss at lowly Iowa State.
The ISU football team was perfectly mediocre with a 6-6 regular season, but lowly? That word choice seems influenced by historical narrative. (Not that the narrative is wrong, just overly harsh in this particular instance.)
This season’s women’s basketball team, on the other hand…
No. 10 Texas A&M easily handles lowly Iowa State
The context of the second appearance of the word in four days is much harder to argue.
Maybe some day Iowa State games will show up as another team’s “best wins” rather than “worst losses” (or in the case of 1972 Nebraska, “worst ties”). But the narrative carries a lot of inertia.
