Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

Griswold American, July 21, 1921:

Seems to be Worried.

If one were to judge from the following article taken from the Lewis Standard, the people of the town of Lewis are fearful lest they lose the little old White Pole road, and that with the loss of this noted road the town would dry up and be removed from the universe:

“Lewis is now on the White Pole road, or Primary road No. 2. There is now and has been for months an effort made to change this road so that it will run south on the Atlantic cemetery road to the so called ‘Short’ Line. Eventually, and we do not believe the time is far away, this will be one of the transcontinental highways. If the change is made it will not be a month or for six weeks, but for all time to come, and Lewis will be isolated. The question is, will we fight to keep what we’ve got, or will we let other towns take it away from us? Let’s fight!”

Now, look here, Bro. Willey. If you and your people would work with your neighbors and not run off to “foreign” towns to do your boosting, Lewis would be much better off. The insinuation that Griswold is trying to get what little road you have is all bunk. The people of Griswold have done more to assist Lewis in maintaining good roads than the people of Lewis themselves have. It does not help Lewis to have people along the White Pole road say in public that they would give good sums of money to have the road taken away. Griswold is not trying to take anything away from Lewis — in fact we have tried to do you a good turn. The grading of the road west of the Indian creek bridge would be of benefit to Lewis. Tourists and others have already been through Lewis before they strike this road when coming this way, and if they are traveling east through Griswold they will go through Lewis via this road. Now get down to brass tacks and look at the matter from the proper end of the telescope.

Lewis was afraid that the White Pole Road, which in the western half of Iowa would later become US 6, would be routed onto the I.O.A. Short Line between central Cass County and Council Bluffs. The Short Line went through Griswold, and decades later would be added to the state system as the westernmost part of IA 92.

Consider that the 1920s were within living memory of towns drying up and being removed from the universe when a railroad didn’t go through. Through that lens, Lewis’ fears weren’t necessarily unfounded.

In the summer of 1921, Lewis had already experienced one change in the state primary system: IA 24 had been rerouted through Atlantic, but still touched Lewis with IA 2 on what’s now Nishna Valley Road. The 6-mile segment left behind is one of Iowa’s most-numbered roads: After being restored to the system later, it spent time as IA 2, IA 92, IA 100, and IA 414 before becoming G43. Also, by the end of the year, the road to Atlantic had been straightened out to its present alignment.

For more about the area, see the IA 100 (1920 Series) page and what’s probably the second-most reproduced Iowa highway photo of the prewar years.

August 23, 2019: The current Essex school, which opened in 1970, is at the southwest corner of town. A vacated portion of original IA 48, an extension of South Avenue, ran through part of the building’s footprint and across home plate of the softball diamond.

IA 48 runs from Shenandoah to Red Oak, as it did in 1920, and now also goes north to US 6, but the original route has next to nothing in common with what you’d drive today.

For about five years (1926-31), IA 48 also went south from Shenandoah to the Missouri state line, only to have IA 4 replace that part. After a short stint as IA 73 (II) in 1934, that road became US 59.

The 1920 route started in Shenandoah, southeast of downtown. A little more than a decade later, it ran on Sheridan Street through downtown of the largest non-county-seat city in Iowa’s southwest quadrant. It did that until being moved to the north side of the city in 1980.

From there, it stairstepped to Essex until a diagonalization in 1930. The 1929 preliminary plan kept a corner at 190th Street and B Avenue.

It is extremely easy to walk on the portion that carried the designation in both 1920 and 2020 — Forbes Street to the M41 junction in Essex. I believe the section-line skip on the north-south road has been there a while, given that the 1930 paving document showed structures on the other side of the railroad.

From Essex to Red Oak, the original route is mostly gravel but has M41 as a farm-to-market designation. The tiny town of Coburg missed out twice, first being ¾ mile east and now 1½ miles west of 48. At Red Oak, it overlapped IA 8 (now US 34) into downtown, ending probably at the courthouse or town square, until an early truncation.

Its extension to US 32 was a two-step process: First to Griswold via Elliott in 1930, and then to 32 after 16 months. The last extension brought the route of the original north-south route of IA 100 back into the primary system.

(Roadgeeking and Philosophy: A Course in Applied Metaphysics, coming to a classroom near you!)